[Epea Aptera]; unspoken sermons. Third Series

Third Series

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JSequcatbeO to
of tbe

ITlnivereit^ of Toronto
IProfessor m. S. /IDllner

3

UNSPOKEN SERMONS

THIRD SERIES

WORKS BY GEORGE MACDONALD, LL.D.

UNSPOKEN SERMONS. First Series. Crown 8vo.

UNSPOKEN SERMONS. Second Series. Crown
8vo. y. dd.

TPIE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD. Crown 8vo.
35. (>d.

BOOK OF STRIFE, IN THE FORM OF THE
DIARY OF AN OLD SOUL: Poems. i2nio. 6s.

London : LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.

Ettpci a inijxi

UNSPOKEN SERMONS

THIRD SERIES

By GEORGE MAC DONALD

AUTHOR OF 'within AND WITHOUT,' ' THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD,'
ETC. ETC.

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people

LONDON

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST i6t>> STREET

i88q

All rights reserved

PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE

TO MY WIFE.

Sun an^ win^ an^ rain, tbc l.ol•^
5s to sec? bis ffatbcr buric^ ;

ffor be is tbc living taort,
HnJ> tbc (juickcning Spirit.

BORDIGHERA :

May 3, 1889.

Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive

in 2008 witii funding from

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CONTENTS.

PAGE

THE CREATION IN CHRIST . . . . . I

THE KNOWING OF THE SON . . . -25

THE MIRRORS OF THE LORD . . . . . 42

THE TRUTH . . . . . . -56

FREEDOM . . . . . . . 83

KINGSHIP ....... 98

JUSTICE . . . . . . . . 109

LIGHT . . . . . . .163

THE DISPLEASURE OF JESUS . . . . . 182

RIGHTEOUSNESS ...... 209

THE FINAL UNMASKING . . . . . 229

THE INHERITANCE ...... 247

THE CREATION IN CHRIST.

All things were made by him, and without him was not any-
thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the
light of men. — /o//;« i. 3, 4.

It seems to me that any lover of the gospel given
to thinking, and especially one accustomed to the
effort of uttering thought, can hardly have failed
to feel dissatisfaction, more or less definite, with
the close of the third verse, as here presented to
English readers. It seems to me in its feebleness,
unlike, and rhetorically unworthy of the rest. That
it is no worse than pleonastic, that is, redundant,
therefore only unnecessary, can be no satisfaction
to the man who would find perfection, if he may, in
the words of him who was nearer the Lord than
any other. The phrase ' that was made ' seems,
from its uselessness, weak even to foolishness after
what precedes : ' All things were made by him, and
without him was not anything made that was
viade!

III. B

J

2 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

My hope was therefore great when I saw, in
reading the Greek, that the shifting of a period
would rid me of the pleonasm. If thereupon any-
precious result of meaning should follow, the change
would not merely be justifiable — seeing that points
are of no authority with anyone accustomed to the
vagaries of scribes, editors, and printers— but one for
which to give thanks to God. And I found the
change did unfold such a truth as showed the rhe-
toric itself in accordance with the highest thought
of the apostle. So glad was I, that it added little
to my satisfaction to find the change supported by
the best manuscripts and versions. It could add
none to learn that the passage had been, in respect
of the two readings, a cause of much disputation :
the ground of argument on the side of the common
reading, seemed to me worse than worthless.

Let us then look at the passage as I think it
ought to be translated, and after that, seek the
meaning for the sake of which it was written. It
is a meaning indeed by no means dependent for its
revelation on this passage, belonging as it does to
the very truth as it is in Jesus ; but it is therein
magnificently expressed by the apostle, and differ-
ently from anywhere else — that is, if I am right in

The Creation in Christ

the interpretation which suggested itself the moment
I saw the probable rhetorical relation of the words.

* All things were made through him, and without
him was made not one thing. That which was
made in him was life, and the life was the light of
men.'

Note the antithesis of the through and the in.

In this grand assertion seems to me to lie, more
than shadowed, the germ of creation and redemp-
tion— of all the divine in its relation to all the
human.

In attempting to set forth what I find in it, I
write with no desire to provoke controversy, which
I loathe, but with some hope of presenting to the
minds of such as have become capable of seeing it,
the glory of the truth of the Father and the Son,
as uttered by this first of seers, after the grandest
fashion of his insight. I am as indifferent to a
reputation for orthodoxy as I despise the cham-
pionship of novelty. To the untrue, the truth it-
self must seem unsound, for the light that is in them
is darkness.

I believe, then, that Jesus Christ is the eternal
son of the eternal father ; that from the first of
firstness Jesus is the son, because God is the

B 2

4 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

father — a statement imperfect and unfit because an
attempt of human thought to represent that which
it cannot grasp, yet which it so beHevcs that it
must try to utter it even in speech that cannot be
right. I believe therefore that the Father is the
greater, that if the Father had not been, the Son
could not have been. I will not apply logic to the
thesis, nor would I state it now but for the sake of
what is to follow. The true heart will remember
the inadequacy of our speech, and our thought also,
to the things that lie near the unknown roots of
our existence. In saying what I do, I only say
what Paul implies when he speaks of the Lord
giving up the kingdom to his father, that God may
be all in all. I worship the Son as the human God,
the divine, the only Man, deriving his being and
power from the Father, equal with him as a son is
the equal at once and the subject of his father —
but making Jiiuiself the equal of his father in what
is most precious in Godhead, 7tamely, Love — which is,
indeed, the essence of that statement of the evan-
gelist with which I have now to do — a higher
thing than the making of the worlds and the
things in them, which he did b}- the power of the
Father, not b}- a self-existent power in himself,

The Creation in Christ

whence the apostle, to whom the Lord must have
said things he did not say to the rest, or who was
better able to receive what he said to all, says, ' All
things were made ' not /y, but ' tlirougJi him.'

We must not wonder things away into nonen-
tity, but try to present them to ourselves after what
fashion we are able — our shadows of the heavenly.
For our very beings and understandings and con-
sciousnesses, though but shadows in regard to any
perfection either of outline or operation, are yet
shadows of his being, his understanding, his
consciousness, and he has cast those shadows ;
they are no more causally our own than his power
of creation is ours. In our shadow-speech then,
and following with my shadow-understanding as
best I can the words of the evangelist, I say. The
Father, in bringing out of the unseen the things that
are seen, made essential use of the Son, so that
all that exists was created tJirougJi him. What the
difference between the part in creation of the
Father and the part of the Son may be, who can
understand ? — but perhaps we may one day come to
see into it a little ; for I dare hope that, through
our willed sonship, we shall come far nearer our-
, selves to creating. The word creation applied to

6 Unspoken Sei^nwns : T/ih'd Series

the loftiest success of human genius, seems to me
a mockery of humanity, itself in process of crea-
tion.

Let us read the text again : ' All things were
made through him, and without him was made not
one thing. That which was made in him was life.'
You begin to see it? The power by which he
created the worlds was given him by his father ;
he had in himself a greater power than that by
which he made the worlds. There was something
made, not through but z« him ; something brought
into being by himself. Here he creates in his
grand way, in himself, as did the Father. ' That
which was made in him was life.'

What does this mean ? What is the life the
apostle intends ? Many forms of life have come
to being through the Son, but those were results,
not forms of the life that was brought to existence
in him. He could not have been employed by the
Father in creating, save in virtue of the life that
was in him.

As to what the life of God is to himself, we can
only know that we cannot know it — even that not
being absolute ignorance, for no one can see that,
from its very nature, he cannot understand a thing,

The Creation in Christ

without therein approaching that thing in a most
genuine manner. As to what the Hfe of God is in
relation to us, we know that it is the causing Hfe of
everything that we call life— of everything that is ;
and in knowing this, we know something of that
life, by the very forms of its force. But the one
interminable mystery, for I presume the two make
but one mystery — a mystery that must be a mystery
to us for ever, not because God will not explain it,
but because God himself could not make us under-
stand it — is first, how he can be self-existent, and
next, how he can make other beings exist : self-
existence and creation no man will ever understand.
Again, regarding the matter from the side of the
creature — the cause of his being is antecedent to
that being ; he can therefore have no knowledge of
his own creation ; neither could he understand that
which he can do nothing like. If we could make
ourselves, we should understand our creation, but to
do that we must be God. And of all ideas this —
that, with the self-dissatisfied, painfully circum-
scribed consciousness I possess, I could in any
way have caused myself, is the most dismal and
hopeless. Nevertheless, if I be a child of God, I
must be like him, like him even in the matter of

8 Uiispokc/i Sermons : Third Series

this creative energy. There must be something in
me that corresponds in its childish way to the
eternal might in him. But 1 am forestalling. The
question now is : What was that life, the thing
made in the Son — made by him inside himself, not
outside him — made not through but in him — the life
that was his own, as God's is his own ?

It was, I answer, that act in him that corre-
sponded in him, as the son, to the self-existence of
his father. Now what is the deepest in God ? His
power ? No, for power could not make him what
we mean when we say God. Evil could, of course,
never create one atom ; but let us understand very
plainly, that a being whose essence was only power
would be such a negation of the divine that no
righteous worship could be offered him : his service
must be fear, and fear only. Such a being, even
were he righteous in judgment, yet could not be
God. The God himself whom we love could not be
righteous were he not something deeper and better
still than we generally mean by the word — but,
alas, how little can language say without seeming
to say something wrong ! In one word, God is
Love. Love is the deepest depth, the essence of
his nature, at the root of all his being. It is not

The Creation in Christ

merely that he could not be God, if he had made
no creatures to whom to be God ; but love is the
heart and hand of his creation ; it is his right to
create, and his power to create as well. The love
that foresees creation is itself the power to create.
Neither could he be righteous— that is, fair to his
creatures — but that his love created them. His
perfection is his love. All his divine rights rest
upon his love. Ah, he is not the great monarch 1
The simplest peasant loving his cow, is more
divine than any monarch whose monarchy is his
glory. If God would not punish sin, or if he did
it for anything but love, he would not be the
father of Jesus Christ, the God who works as Jesus
wrought.

What then, I say once more, is in Christ cor-
respondent to the creative power of God ? It
must be something that comes also of love ; and
in the Son the love must be to the already exis-
tent. Because of that eternal love which has no
beginning, the Father must have the Son. God
could not love, could not be love, without making
things to love : Jesus has God to love ; the love of
the Son is responsive to the love of the Father.
The response to self-existent love is self-abnegating

lo Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

love. The refusal of himself is that in Jesus which
corresponds to the creation of God. His love takes
action, creates, in self-abjuration, in the death of
self as motive ; in the drowning of self in the life
of God, where it lives only as love. What is life in a
child ? Is it not perfect response to his parents ?
thorough oneness with them ? A child at strife
with his parents, one in whom their will is not
his, is no child ; as a child he is dead, and his
death is manifest in rigidity and contortion. His
spiritual order is on the way to chaos. Disin-
tegration has begun. Death is at work in him.
See the same child yielding to the will that is
righteously above his own ; see the life begin to
flow from the heart through the members ; see the
relaxing limbs ; see the light rise like a fountain
in his eyes, and flash from his face ! Life has
again its lordship !

The life of Christ is this — negatively, that he
docs nothing, cares for nothing for his own sake ;
positively, that he cares with his whole soul for
the will, the pleasure of his father. Because his
father is his father, therefore he will be his child.
The truth in Jesus is his relation to his father ;
the righteousness of Jesus is his fulfilment of that

The Creation in Christ 1 1

relation. Meeting this relation, loving his father
with his whole being, he is not merely alive as
born of God ; but, giving himself with perfect will
to God, choosing to die to himself and live to God,
he therein creates in himself a new and higher
life ; and, standing upon himself, has gained the
power to awake life, the divine shadow of his own,
in the hearts of us his brothers and sisters, who
have come from the same birth-home as himself,
namely, the heart of his God and our God, his
father and our father, but who, without our elder
brother to do it first, would never have chosen that
self-abjuration which is life, never have become
alive like him. To will, not from self, but with
the Eternal, is to live.

This choice of his own being, in the full know-
ledge of what he did ; this active willing to be the
Son of the Father, perfect in obedience — is that in
Jesus which responds and corresponds to the self-
existence of God. Jesus rose at once to the height
of his being, set himself down on the throne of his
nature, in the act of subjecting himself to the will
of the Father as his only good, the only reason of
his existence. When he died on the cross, he did
that, in the wild weather of his outlying provinces,

/

X 2 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

in the torture of the body of his revelation, which
he had done at home in glory and gladness. From
the infinite beginning — for here I can speak only
by contradictions— he completed and held fast the
eternal circle of his existence in saying, ' Thy will^
not mine, be done ! ' He made himself what he is
by deatldng himself into the will of the eternal
Father, through which will he was the eternal
Son — thus plunging into the fountain of his own
life, the everlasting Fatherhood, and taking the God-
head of the Son. This is the life that was made
in Jesus : ' That which was made in him was life.'
This life, self-willed in Jesus, is the one thing that
makes such life — the eternal life, the true life,
possible — nay, imperative, essential, to every man,
woman, and child, whom the Father has sent into
the outer, that he may go back into the inner
world, his heart. As the self-existent life of the
Father has given us being, so the willed devotion
of Jesus is his power to give us eternal life like
his own — to enable us to do the same. There
is no life for any man, other than the same kind
that Jesus has ; his disciple must live by the same
absolute devotion of his will to the Father's ; then
is his life one with the life of the Father.

The Cj'eation in Christ 13

Because we are come out of the divine nature,
which chooses to be divine, we must choose to be
divine, to be of God, to be one with God, loving
and living as he loves and lives, and so be par-
takers of the divine nature, or we perish. Man
cannot originate this life ; it must be shown him,
and he must choose it. God is the father of Jesus
and of us^of every possibility of our being ; but
while God is the father of his children, Jesus is the
father of their sonship ; for in him is made the life
which is sonship to the Father— the recognition,
namely, in fact and life, that the Father has his
claim upon his sons and daughters. We are not
and cannot become true sons without our will will-
ing his will, our doing following his making. It
was the will of Jesus to be the thing God willed
and meant him, that made him the true son of
God. He was not the son of God because he
could not help it, but because he willed to be in
himself the son that he was in the divine idea. So
with us : we must be the sons we are. We are not
made to be what we cannot help being ; sons and
daughters are not after such fashion ! We are sons
and daughters in God's claim ; we must be sons and
daughters in our will. And we can be sons and

14 U^ispoken Sermons : Third Series

daughters, saved into the original necessity and
bHss of our being, only by choosing God for the
father he is, and doing his will — yielding ourselves
true sons to the absolute Father. Therein lies
human bliss — only and essential. The working
out of this our salvation must be pain, and the
handing of it down to them that are below must
ever be in pain ; but the eternal form of the will
of God in and for us, is intensity of bliss.
* And the life was the light of men.'
The life of which I have now spoken be-
came light to men in the appearing of him in
whom it came into being. The life became light
that men might see it, and themselves live by
choosing that life also, by choosing so to live,
such to be.

There is always something deeper than anything
said — a something of which all human, all divine
words, figures, pictures, motion-forms, are but the
outer laminar spheres through which the central
reality shines more or less plainly. Light itself is
but the poor outside form of a deeper, better thing,
namely, life. The life is Christ. The light too is
Christ, but only the body of Christ. The life is
Christ himself The light is what we see and

The Creation in Christ 1 5

shall see in him ; the life is what we may be
in him. The life ' is a light by abundant clarity
invisible ; ' it is the unspeakable unknown ; it must
become light such as men can see before men can
know it. Therefore the obedient human God
appeared as the obedient divine man, doing the
works of his father— the things, that is, which his
father did — doing them humbly before unfriendly
brethren. The Son of the Father must take his
own form in the substance of flesh, that he may be
seen of men, and so become the light of men — not
that men may have light, but that men may have
life ; — that, seeing what they could not originate,
they may, through the life that is in them, begin
to hunger after the life of which they are capable,
and which is essential to their being ; — that the life
in them may long for him who is their life, and
thirst for its own perfection, even as root and stem
may thirst for the flower for whose sake, and
through whose presence in them, they exist That
the child of God may become the son of God by
beholding the Son, the life revealed in light ; that
the radiant heart of the Son of God may be the
sunlight to his fellows ; that the idea may be
drawn out by the presence and drawing of the Ideal

1 6 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

— that Ideal, the perfect Son of the Father, was
sent to his brethren.

Let us not forget that the devotion of the Son
could never have been but for the devotion of the
Father, who never seeks his own glory one atom
more than does the Son ; who is devoted to the Son,
and to all his sons • and daughters, with a devotion
perfect and eternal, with fathomless unselfishness.
The whole being and doing of Jesus on earth is the
same as his being and doing from all eternity, that
whereby he is the blessed son-God of the father-
God ; it is the shining out of that life that men
might see it. It is a being like God, a doing of
the will of God, a working of the works of God,
therefore an unveiling of the Father in the Son,
that men may know him. It is the prayer of
the Son to the rest of the sons to come back to
the Father, to be reconciled to the Father, to
behave to the Father as he does. He seems
to mc to say : ' I know your father, for he is my
father ; I know him because I have been with
him from eternity. You do not know him ; I have
come to you to tell you that as I am, such is he ;
that he is just like me, only greater and better.
He only is the true, original good ; I am true

The Creation in Christ 17

because I seek nothing but his will. He only is
all in all ; I am not all in all, but he is my father,
and I am the son in whom his heart of love is
satisfied. Come home with me, and sit with me on
the throne of my obedience. Together v/e will do
his will, and be glad with him, for his will is the
only good. You may do with me as you please ;
I will not defend myself Because I speak true,
my witness is unswerving ; I stand to it, come what
may. If I held my face to my testimony only till
danger came close, and then prayed the Father for
twelve legions of angels to deliver me, that would
be to say the Father would do anything for his
children until it began to hurt him. I bear witness
that my father is such as 1. In the face of death
I assert it, and dare death to disprove it. Kill me ;
do what you will and can against me ; my father
is true, and I am true in saying that he is true.
Danger or hurt cannot turn me aside from this my
witness. Death can only kill my body ; he cannot
make me his captive. Father, thy will be done !
The pain will pass ; it will be but for a time !
Gladly will I suffer that men may know that I live,
and that thou art my life. Be with me, father, that
it may not be more than I can bear.'

1 8 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

Friends, if you think anything less than this
could redeem the world, or make blessed any child
that God has created, you know neither the Son nor
the Father.

The bond of the universe, the chain that holds
it together, the one active unity, the harmony of
things, the negation of difference, the reconciliation
of all forms, all shows, all wandering desires, all
returning loves ; the fact at the root of every vision,
revealing that ' love is the only good in the world,'
and selfishness the one thing hateful, in the city of
the living God unutterable, is the devotion of the
Son to the Father. It is the life of the universe.
It is not the fact that God created all things, that
makes the universe a whole ; but that he through
whom he created them loves him perfectly, is eter-
nally content in his father, is satisfied to be because
his father is with him. It is not the fact that God
is all in all, that unites the universe ; it is the love
of the Son to the Father. For of no onehood
comes unity ; there can be no oneness where there
is only one. For the very beginnings of unity
there must be two. Without Christ, therefore,
there could be no universe. The reconciliation
wrought by Jesus is not the primary source of unity.

The Creation in Christ 19

of safety to the world ; that reconcihation was the
necessary working out of the eternal antecedent fact,
the fact making itself potent upon the rest of the
family — that God and Christ are one, are father and
son, the Father loving the Son as only the Father can
love, the Son loving the Father as only the Son can
love. The prayer of the Lord for unity between
men and the Father and himself, springs from the
eternal need of love. The more I regard it, the
more I am lost in the wonder and glory of the
thing. But for the Father and the Son, no two
would care a jot the one for the other. It might
be the right way for creatures to love because of
mere existence, but what two creatures would ever
have originated the loving ? I cannot for a moment
believe it would have been I. Even had I come
into being as now with an inclination to love, self-
ishness would soon have overborne it. But if the
Father loves the Son, if the very music that makes
the harmony of life lies, not in the theory of love
in the heart of the Father, but in the fact of it, in
the burning love in the hearts of Father and Son,
then glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to
the spirit of both, the fatherhood of the Father
meeting and blending with the sonhood of the Son,

c 2

20 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

and drawing us up into the glory of their joy, to
share in the thoughts of love that pass between
them, in their thoughts of delight and rest in each
other, in their thoughts of joy in all the little ones.
The life of Jesus is the light of men, revealing to
them the Father.

But light is not enough ; light is for the sake
of life. We too must have life in ourselves. We too
must, like the Life himself, live. We can live in no
way but that in which Jesus lived, in which life was
made in him. That way is, to give up our life.
This is the one supreme action of life possible to
us for the making of life in ourselves. Christ did
it of himself, and so became light to us, that we
might be able to do it in ourselves, after him, and
through his originating act. We must do it our-
selves, I say. The help that he has given and gives,
the light and the spirit-working of the Lord, the
spirit, in our hearts, is all in order that we may, as
we must, do it ourselves. Till then we are not alive ;
life is not made in us. The whole strife and labour

^ and agony of the Son with every man, is to get him
to die as he died. All preaching that aims not at this,

/ is a building with wood and hay and stubble. If I
say not with whole heart, ' My father, do with me as

The Creation in Christ 21

thou wilt, only help me against myself and for
thee ; ' if I cannot say, ' I am thy child, the in-
heritor of thy spirit, thy being, a part of thyself,
glorious in thee, but grown poor in me : let me be
thy dog, thy horse, thy anything thou wiliest ; let
me be thine in any shape the love that is my
Father may please to have me ; let me be thine in
any way, and my own or another's in no way but
thine ; ' — if we cannot, fully as this, give ourselves
to the Father, then we have not yet laid hold upon
that for which Christ has laid hold upon us. The
faith that a man may, nay, must put in God, reaches
above earth and sky, stretches beyond the farthest
outlying star of the creatable universe. The
question is not at present, however, of removing
mountains, a thing that will one day be simple to
us, but of waking and rising from the dead nozv.

When a man truly and perfectly says with
Jesus, and as Jesus said it, ' Thy will be done,' he
closes the everlasting life-circle ; the life of the
Father and the Son flows through him ; he is a part
of the divine organism. Then is the prayer of the
Lord in him fulfilled : ' I in them and thou in me,
that they made be made perfect in one.' The
Christ in us, is the spirit of the perfect child toward

2 2 Unspoken Sermons : Third Sej^ies

the perfect father. The Christ in us is our own
true nature made blossom in us by the Lord, whose
life is the Hght of men that it may become the life
of men ; for our true nature is childhood to the
Father.

Friends, those of you who know, or suspect,
that these things are true, let us arise and live — arise
even in the darkest moments of spiritual stupidity,
when hope itself sees nothing to hope for. Let us
not trouble ourselves about the cause of our earthli-
ness, except we know it to be some unrighteousness
in us, but go at once to the Life. Never, never
let us accept as consolation the poor suggestion,
that the cause of our deadncss is physical. Can
it be comfort to know that this body of ours, be-
cause of the death in it, is too much for the spirit
— which ought not merely to triumph over it, but
to inspire it with subjection and obedience ? Let
us comfort ourselves in the thought of the Father
and the Son. So long as there dwells harmony,
so long as the Son loves the Father with all the
love the Father can welcome, all is well with the
little ones. God is all righi — why should we mind
standing in the dark for a minute outside his win-
dow ? Of course we miss the hmcss, but there is a

The Creation in Christ 23

bliss of its own in waiting. What if the rain be
falHng, and the wind blowing ; what if we stand
alone, or, more painful still, have some dear one
beside us, sharing our outness ; what even if the
window be not shining, because of the curtains of
good inscrutable drawn across it ; let us think to
ourselves, or say to our friend, ' God is ; Jesus is not
dead ; nothing can be going wrong, however it may
look so to hearts unfinished in childness.' Let us
say to the Lord, ' Jesus, art thou loving the Father
in there ? Then we out here will do his will,
patiently waiting till he open the door. We shall
not mind the wind or the rain much. Perhaps thou
art saying to the Father, " Thy little ones need some
wind and rain : their buds are hard ; the flowers do
not come out. I cannot get them made blessed
without a little more winter-weather." Then per-
haps the Father will say, " Comfort them, my son
Jesus, with the memory of thy patience when thou
wast missing me. Comfort them that thou wast
sure of me when everything about thee seemed so
unlike me, so unlike the place thou hadst left." ' In
a word, let us be at peace, because peace is at the
heart of things — peace and utter satisfaction be-
tween the Father and the Son — in which peace they

24 Unspoken Sermons : Third Se^Hes

call us to share ; in which peace they promise that
at length, when they have their good way with us,
we shall share.

Before us, then, lies a bliss unspeakable, a bliss
beyond the thought or invention of man, to every
child who will ffill in with the perfect imagination
of the Father. His imagination is one with his
creative will. The thing that God imagines, that
thing exists. When the created falls in with the
will of him who ' loved him into being,' then all is
well ; thenceforward the mighty creation goes on
in him upon higher and yet higher levels, in more
and yet more divine airs. Thy will, O God, be
done ! Nought else is other than loss, than decay,
than corruption. There is no life but that born
of the life that the Word made in himself by
doing thy will, which life is the light of men.
Through that light is born the life of men-the
same life in them that came first into being in
Jesus. As he laid down his life, so must men lay
down their lives, that as he liveth they may live
also. That which was made in him was life, and
the life is the light of men ; and yet his own, to
whom he was sent, did not belkvc him.

25

THE KNOWING OF THE SON.

Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape.
And ye have not his word abiding in you ; for whom he hath sent,
him ye believe not.— Jo/ui v. 37, 38.

We shall know one day just how near we come in
the New Testament to the very words of the Lord.
That we have them with a difference, I cannot
doubt. For one thing, I do not believe he spoke in
Greek. He was sent to the lost sheep of the house
of Israel, and would speak their natural language,
not that which, at best, they knew in secondary
fashion. That the thoughts of God would come
out of the heart of Jesus in anything but the
mother-tongue of the simple men to whom he
spoke, I cannot think. He may perhaps have
spoken to the Jews of Jerusalem in Greek, for
they were less simple ; but at present I do not
see ground to believe he did.

Again, are we bound to believe that John
Boanerges, who indeed best, and in some things

26 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

alone, understood him, was able, after such a lapse of
years, to give us in his gospel, supposing the Lord
to have spoken to his disciples in Greek, the very
words in which he uttered the simplest profundi-
ties ever heard in the human world? I do not say-
he was not able ; I say — Are we bound to believe
he was able ? When the disciples became, by the
divine presence in their hearts, capable of under-
standing the Lord, they remembered things he had
said which they had forgotten ; possibly the very
words in which he said them returned to their
memories ; but must we believe the evangelists
always precisely recorded his words ? The little
differences between their records is answer enough.
The gospel of John is the outcome of years and
years of remembering, recalling, and pondering the
words of the Mastei, one thing understood recalling
another. We cannot tell of how much the memory,
in best condition — that is, with God in the man —
may not be capable ; but I do not believe that John
would have always given us the ver}- words of the
Lord, even if, as I do not think he did, he had spoken
them in Greek. God has not cared that we should
anywhere have assurance of his very words ; and that
not merely, perhaps, because of the tendency in his

The Knowing of the Son 2 7

children to word-worship, false logic, and corruption
of the truth, but because he would not have them
oppressed by words, seeing that words, being
human, therefore but partially capable, could not
absolutely contain or express what the Lord meant,
and that even he must depend for being understood
upon the spirit of his disciple. Seeing it could not
give life, the letter should not be throned with
power to kill ; it should be but the handmaid to
open the door of the truth to the mind that was of
the truth.

' Then you believe in an individual inspiration
to anyone who chooses to lay claim to it ! '

Yes — to everyone who claims it from God ;
not to everyone who claims from men the recogni-
tion of his possessing it. He who has a thing,
does not need to have it recognized. If I did not
believe in a special inspiration to every man who
asks for the holy spirit, the good thing of God, I
should have to throw aside the whole tale as an
imposture ; for the Lord has, according to that tale,
promised such inspiration to those who ask it.
If an objector has not this spirit, is not inspired
with the truth, he knows nothing of the words that
are spirit and life ; and his objection is less worth

2 8 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

heeding than that of a savage to the assertion of a
chemist. His assent equally is but the blowing of
an idle horn.

' But how is one to tell whether it be in truth
the spirit of God that is speaking in a man ? '

You are not called upon to tell. The question
for you is whether you have the spirit of Christ
yourself The question is for you to put to your-
self, the question is for you to answer to yourself :
Am I alive with the life of Christ ? Is his spirit
dwelling in me ? Everyone who desires to follow
the Master has the spirit of the Master, and will
receive more, that he may follow closer, nearer, in
his very footsteps. He is not called upon to prove
to this or that or any man that he has the light of
Jesus ; he has to let his light shine. It does not
follow that his work is to teach others, or that he
is able to speak large truths in true forms. When
the strength or the joy or the pity of the truth
urges him, let him speak it out and not be afraid —
content to be condemned for it ; comforted that
if he mistake, the Lord himself will condemn him,
and save him ' as by fire.' The condemnation of
his fellow men will not hurt him, nor a whit the
more that it be spoken in the name of Christ. If

The Knoiving of the Son 29

he speak true, the Lord, will say ' I sent him.'
For all truth is of him ; no man can see a true
thing to be true but by the Lord, the spirit.

' How am I to know that a thing is true ? '

By doing what you know to be true, and call-
ing nothing true until you see it to be true ; by
shutting your mouth until the truth opens it. Are
you meant to be silent ? Then woe to you if you
speak.

' But if I do not take the words attributed to him
by the evangelists, for the certain, absolute, very
words of the Master, how am I to know that they
represent his truth ? '

By seeing in them what corresponds to the
plainest truth lie speaks, and commends itself to the
power that is working in you to make of you a true
man ; by their appeal to your power of judging
what is true ; by their rousing of your conscience.
If they do not seem to you true, either they are not
the words of the Master, or you are not true enough
to understand them. Be certain of this, that, if
any words that are his do not show their truth to
you, you have not received his message in them ;
they are not yet to you the word of God, for they
are not in you spirit and life. They may be the

30 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

nearest to the truth that words can come ; they
may have served to bring many into contact with
the heart of God ; but for you they remain as yet
sealed. If yours be a true heart, it will revere them
because of the probability that they are words
with the meaning of the Master behind them ; to
you they are the rock in the desert before Moses
spoke to it. If you wait, your ignorance will not
hurt you ; if you presume to reason from them,
you are a blind man disputing of that you never
saw. To reason from a thing not understood, is to
walk straight into the mire. To dare to reason of
truth from words that do not show to us that they
are true, is the presumption of Pharisaical hypocrisy.
Only they who are not true, are capable of doing it.
Humble mistake will not hurt us : the truth is there,
and the Lord will see that we come to know it. We
may think we know it when we have scarce a glimpse
of it ; but the error of a true heart will not be allowed
to ruin it. Certainly that heart would not have mis-
taken the truth except for the untruth yet remaining
in it ; but he who casts out devils will cast out that
devil.

In the saying before us, I see enough to enable
me to believe that its words embody the mind of

The Knowing of the Son 3 1

Christ. If I could not say this, I should say, ' The
apostle has here put on record a saying of Christ's ;
I have not yet been able to recognize the mind of
Christ in it ; therefore I conclude that I cannot have
understood it, for to understand what is true is to
know it true.' I have yet seen no words credibly
reported as the words of Jesus, concerning which I
dared to say, ' His mind is not therein, therefore
the words are not his.' The mind of man can
receive any word only in proportion as it is the
word of Christ, and in proportion as he is one with
Christ. To him who does verily receive his word,
it is a power, not of argument, but of life. The
words of the Lord are not for the logic that deals
with words as if they were things ; but for the
spiritual logic that reasons from divine thought to
divine thought, dealing with spiritual facts.

No thought, human or divine, can be conveyed
from man to man save through the symbolism of
the creation. The heavens and the earth are
around us that it may be possible for us to speak
of the unseen by the seen ; for the outermost husk
of creation has correspondence with the deepest
things of the Creator. He is not a God that hideth
himself, but a God who made that he might reveal ;

32 Unspoken Sermons : T/iii'd Series

he is consistent and one throughout. There are
things with which an enemy hath meddled ; but
there are more things with which no enemy could
meddle, and by which we may speak of God. They
may not have revealed him to us, but at least when
he is revealed, they show themselves so much of
his nature, that we at once use them as spiritual
tokens in the commerce of the spirit, to help convey
to other minds what we may have seen of the un-
seen. Belonging to this sort of mediation are the
words of the Lord I would now look into.

' And the Father himself which hath sent me,
hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard
his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And ye
have not his word abiding in you : for whom he
hath sent, him ye believe not'

If Jesus said these words, he meant more, not
less, than lies on their surface. They cannot be
mere assertion of what everybody knew ; neither
can their repetition of similar negations be tautolo-
gical. They were not intended to inform the Jews
of a fact they would not have dreamed of denying.
Who among them would say he had ever heard
God's voice, or seen his shape } John himself says
' No man hath seen God at any time.' What is

The Knozuing of ike Son 2)Z

the tone of the passage ? It is reproach. Then he
reproaches them that they had not seen God, when
no man hath seen God at any time, and Paul says
no man can see him ! Is there here any paradox ?
There cannot be the sophism : ' No man hath seen
God ; ye are to blame that ye have not seen God ;
therefore all men are to blame that they have not
seen God ! ' If we read, ' No man hath seen God,
but some men ought to have seen him,' we do not
reap such hope for the race as will give the aspect
of a revelation to the assurance that not one of
those capable of seeing him has ever seen him !

The one utterance is of John ; the other of his
master : if there is any contradiction between them,
of course the words of John must be thrown away.
But there can hardly be contradiction, since he who
says the one thing, is recorder of the other as said
by his master, him to whom he belonged, whose
disciple he was, whom he loved as never man loved
man before.

The word see is used in one sense in the one
statement, and in another sense in the other. In
the one it means see with the eyes ; in the other,
with the soul. The one statement is made of all
men ; the other is made to certain of the Jews of

III. D

34 Unspoken Sermons : TJiii^d Series

Jerusalem concerning themselves. It is true that
no man hath seen God, and true that some men
ought to have seen him. No man hath seen him
with his bodily eyes ; these Jews ought to have
seen him with their spiritual eyes.

No man has ever seen God in any outward,
visible, close-fitting form of his own : he is revealed
in no shape save that of his son. But multitudes
of men have with their mind's, or rather their heart's
eye, seen more or less of God ; and perhaps every
man might have and ought to have seen some-
thing of him. We cannot follow God into his in-
finitesimal intensities of spiritual operation, any
more than into the atomic life-potencies that lie
deep beyond the eye of the microscope : God may
be working in the heart of a savage, in a way that
no wisdom of his wisest, humblest child can see, or
imagine that it sees. Many who have never be-
held the face of God, may yet have caught a glimpse
of the hem of his garment ; many who have never
seen his shape, may yet have seen the vastness of
his shadow ; thousands who have never felt the
warmth of its folds, have yet been startled by

No face : only the sight

Of a sweepy garment vast and white.

The Knozving of the Sou

Some have dreamed his hand laid upon them, who
never knew themselves gathered to his bosom.
The reproach in the words of the Lord is the re-
proach of men who ought to have had an experience
they had not had. Let us look a little nearer at
his words.

' Ye have not heard his voice at any time,'
might mean, ' Ye have never listened to his voiced or
' Ye have never obeyed his voice ; ' but the following
phrase, ' nor seen his shape,' keeps us rather to the
primary sense of the word hear : ' The sound of his
voice is unknozvn to you ; ' ' You have never heard
his voice so as to knoiv it for his' 'You have not
seen his shape ; ' — ' You do not knoiu zuhat he is like.'
Plainly he implies, ' You ought to knozu his voice ;
you ought to knozv zvhat he is like.' ' You have not
his word abiding in you ; ' — ' The zvord that is in
you from the beginning, the zvord of God in your
conscience, you have not kept with you, it is not dzjoell-
ing in you ; by yourselves accepted as the zvitness of
Moses, the scripture in zvhich you think you have
eternal life does not abide zvith you, is not at home
in you. It comes to you and goes from you. You
hear, heed not, and forget. Yoil do not dzvell with
it.^ and brood upon it, and obey it. It finds no

6 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

acquaintance in you. You are not of its kijtd. You
are Jiot of those to whom the word of God comes.
Their ear's are ready to hear ; they Jiunger after the
word of the FatJier.^

On what does the Lord found this his accusa-
tion of them ? What is the sign in them of their
ignorance of God ? — ' For whom he hath sent, him
ye beheve not.'

' How so ? ' the Jews might answer. ' Have we
not asked from thee a sign from heaven, and hast
thou not point-blank refused it ? '

The argument of the Lord was indeed of small
weight with, and of little use to, those to whom it
most applied, for the more it applied, the more in-
capable were they of seeing that it did apply ; but
it would be of great force upon some that stood
listening, their minds more or less open to the truth,
and their hearts drawn to the man before them.
His argument was this : ' If ye had ever heard the
Father's voice ; if ye had ever known his call ; if
you had ever imagined him, or a God anything
like him ; if you had cared for his will so that his
word was at home in your hearts, you would have
known me when you saw me — known that I must
come from him, that I must be his messenger, and

The Knoiuing of the Son ^j

would have listened to me. The least acquaintance
with God, such as any true heart must have, would
have made you recognize that I came from the
God of whom you knew that something. You would
have been capable of knowing me by the light of
his word abiding in you ; by the shape you had
beheld however vaguely ; by the likeness of my
face and my voice to those of my father. You
would have seen my father in me ; you would have
known me by the little you knew of him. The
family-feeling would have been awake in you, the
holy instinct of the same spirit, making you know
your elder brother. That you do not know me
now, as I stand here speaking to you, is that you
do not know your own father, even my father ; that
throughout your lives you have refused to do his will,
and so have not heard his voice ; that you have shut
your eyes from seeing him, and have thought of him
only as a partisan of your ambitions. If you had loved
my father, you would have known his son.' And I
think he might have said, ' If even you had loved your
neighbour, you would have known me, neighbour to
the deepest and best in you.'

If the Lord were to appear this day in England
as once in Palestine, he would not come in the

38 Unspoken Sermons : Third Seizes

halo of the painters, or with that wintry shine of
effeminate beauty, of sweet weakness, in which it is
their helpless custom to represent him. Neither
would he probably come as carpenter, or mason,
or gardener. He would come in such form and
condition as might bear to the present England,
Scotland, and Ireland, a relation like that which
the form and condition he then came in, bore to
the motley Judea, Samaria, and Galilee. If he
came thus, in form altogether unlooked for, who
would they be that recognized and received him ?
The idea involves no absurdity. He is not far
from us at any moment — if the old story be indeed
more than the best and strongest of the fables that
possess the world. He might at any moment
appear : who, I ask, would be the first to receive
him ? Now, as then, it would of course be the
childlike in heart, the truest, the least selfish.
They would not be the highest in the estimation
of any church, for the childlike are not yet the
many. It might not even be those that knew
most about the former visit of the Master, that had
pondered every word of the Greek Testament. The
first to cry, * It is the Lord ! ' would be neither ' good
churchman ' nor ' eood dissenter.' It would be no

The Knozoing of the Son 39

one with so little of the mind of Christ as to imagine
him caring about stupid outside matters. It would
not be the man that holds by the mooring-ring of
the letter, fast in the quay of what he calls theology,
and from his rotting deck abuses the presumption
of those that go down to the sea in ships — lets the
wind of the spirit blow where it listeth, but never
blow him out among its wonders in the deep. It
would not be he who, obeying a command, does
not care to see reason in the command ; not he
who, from very barrenness of soul, cannot receive
the meaning and will of the Master, and so fails to
fulfil the letter of his word, making it of none effect.
It would certainly, if any, be those who were likest
the Master — those, namely, that did the will of their
father and his father, that built their house on the
rock by hearing and doing his sayings. But are
there any enough like him to know him at once
by the sound of his voice, by the look of his face ?
There are multitudes who would at once be taken
by a false Christ fashioned after their fancy, and
would at once reject the Lord as a poor impostor.
One thing is certain : they who first recognized him
would be those that most loved righteousness and
hated iniquity.

40 Unspokeji Sermons : Third Series

But I would not forget that there are many in
whom fooHsh forms cover a hve heart, warm toward
everything human and divine ; for the worst-fitting
and ugHest robe may hide the loveHest form.
Every covering is not a clothing. The grass
clothes the fields ; the glory surpassing Solomon's
clothes the grass ; but the traditions of the worthiest
elders will not clothe any soul — how much less the
traditions of the unworthy ! Its true clothing must
grow out of the live soul itself Some naked souls
need but the sight of truth to rush to it, as Dante
says, like a wild beast to his den ; others, heavily
clad in the garments the scribes have left behind
them, and fearful of rending that which is fit only
to be trodden underfoot, right cautiously approach
the truth, go round and round it like a shy horse
that fears a hidden enemy. But let each be true
after the fashion possible to him, and he shall have
the Master's praise.

If the Lord were to appear, the many who take
the common presentation of thing or person for the
thing or person, could never recognize the new vision
as another form of the old : the Master has been so
misrepresented by such as have claimed to present
him, and especially in the one eternal fact of facts

The Knowing of the Son 4 1

— the relation between him and his father — that
it is impossible they should see any likeness. For
my part, I would believe in no God rather than in
such a God as is generally offered for believing in.
How far those may be to blame who, righteously
disgusted, cast the idea from them, nor make in-
quiry whether something in it may not be true,
though most must be false, neither grant it any
claim to investigation on the chance that some
that call themselves his prophets may have taken
spiritual bribes

To mingle beauty with infirmities,
And pure perfection with impure defeature-
how far those may be to blame, it is not my work
to inquire. Some would grasp with gladness the
hope that such chance might be proved a fact ;
others would not care to discern upon the palim-
psest, covered but not obliterated, a credible tale
of a perfect man revealing a perfect God : they are
not true enough to desire that to be fact which
would immediately demand the modelling of their
lives upon a perfect idea, and the founding of their
every hope upon the same.

But ive all, beholding the glory of the Lord, are
cJiano;ed into the same image.

Unspoken Sermons : Third Scries

THE MIRRORS OF THE LORD.

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of
the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even
as by the spirit of the Lord. — //. Corinthians iii. i8.

We may see from this passage how the apostle
Paul received the Lord, and how he understands
his life to be the light of men, and so their life also.
Of all writers I know, Paul seems to me the
most plainly, the most determinedly practical in
his writing. What has been called his mysticism is
at one time the exercise of a power of seeing, as by
spiritual refraction, truths that had not, perhaps
have not yet, risen above the human horizon ; at
another, the result of a wide-eyed habit of noting
the analogies and correspondences between the
concentric regions of creation ; it is the working of
a poetic imagination divinely alive, whose part is
to foresee and welcome approaching truth ; to dis-
cover the same principle in things that look unlike ;
to embody things discovered, in forms and symbols

The Mirrors of the Lord 43

heretofore unused, and so present to other minds
the deeper truths to which those forms and symbols
owe their being.

I find in Paul's writing the same artistic fault,
with the same resulting difficulty, that I find in
Shakspere's — a' fault that, in each case, springs
from the admirable fact that the man is much
more than the artist — the fault of trying to say too
much at once, of pouring out stintless the plethora
of a soul swelling with life and its thought, through
the too narrow neck of human utterance. Thence
it comes that we are at times bewildered between
two or more meanings, equally good in themselves,
but perplexing as to the right deduction, as to the
line of the thinker's reasoning. The uncertainty,
however, lies always in the intellectual region,
never in the practical. What Paul cares about is
plain enough to the true heart, however far from
plain to the man whose desire to understand goes
ahead of his obedience, who starts with the notion
that Paul's design was to teach a system, to explain
instead of help to see God, a God that can be
revealed only to childlike insight, never to keenest
intellect. The energy of the apostle, like that of
his master, went forth to rouse men to seek the

44 Unspoken Sermons : TJiird Series

kingdom of God over them, his righteousness in
them ; to dismiss the lust of possession and passing
pleasure ; to look upon the glory of the God and
Father, and turn to him from all that he hates ; to /
recognize the brotherhood of men, and the hideous-
ness of what is unfair, unloving, ahd self-exalting.
His design was not to teach any plan of salvation
other than obedience to the Lord of Life. He
knew nothing of the so-called Christian systems
that change the glory of the perfect God into the
likeness of the low intellects and dull consciences
of men — a worse corruption than the representing
of him in human shape. What kind of soul is it
that would not choose the Apollo of light, the high-
walking Hyperion, to the notion of the dull, self-
cherishing monarch, the law-dispensing magistrate,
or the cruel martinet, generated in the pagan arro-
gance of Rome, and accepted by the world in the
church as the portrait of its God ! Jesus Christ
is the only likeness of the living Father.

Let us see then what Paul teaches us in this
passage about the life which is the light of men.
It is his form of bringing to bear upon men the
truth announced by John.

When Moses came out from speaking with

The Mirrors of the Lord 45

God, his face was radiant ; its shining was a
wonder to the people, and a power upon them.
But the radiance began at once to diminish and
die away, as was natural, for it was not indigenous
in Moses. Therefore Moses put a veil upon his
face that they might not see it fade. As to
whether this was right or wise, opinion may differ :
it is not my business to discuss the question.
When he went again into the tabernacle, he took
off his veil, talked with God with open face, and
again put on the veil when he came out. Paul
says that the veil which obscured the face of
Moses lies now upon the hearts of the Jews, so
that they cannot understand him, but that when
they turn to the Lord, go into the tabernacle with
Moses, the veil shall be taken away, and they shall
see God. Then will they understand that the
glory is indeed faded upon the face of Moses, but
*by reason of the glory that excelleth, the glory
of Jesus that overshines it. Here, after all, I can
hardly help asking — Would not Moses have done
better to let them see that the glory of their leader
was altogether dependent on the glory within the
veil, whither they were not worthy to enter ? Did
that veil hide Moses's face only ? Did he not,

46 Unspoken Sermons : TlnT-d Series

however unintentionally, lay it on their hearts ?
Did it not cling there, and help to hide God from
them, so that they could not perceive that the
greater than Moses was come, and stormed at the
idea that the glory of their prophet must yield ?
Might not the absence of that veil from his face
have left them a little more able to realize that
his glory was a glory that must pass, a glory
whose glory was that it prepared the way for a
glory that must extinguish it ? Moses had put
the veil for ever from his face, but they clutched
it to their hearts, and it blinded them — admirable
symbol of the wilful blindness of old Mosaist or
modern VVesleyan, admitting no light that his
Moses or his Wesley did not see, and thus losing
what of the light he saw and reflected.

Paul says that the sight of the Lord will take
that veil from their hearts. His light will burn it
away. His presence gives liberty. Where he is,
there is no more heaviness, no more bondage, no
more wilderness or Mount Sinai. The Son makes
free with sonship.

And now comes the passage whose import I
desire to make more clear :

* But we all,

The Mirrors of the Lord 47

liberty, ' with open face beholding as in a glass
the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same
image,' that of the Lord, ' from glory to glory,
even as of the Lord, the spirit.'

' We need no Moses, no earthly mediator, to
come between us and the light, and bring out for
us a little of the glory. We go into the presence
of the Son revealing the Father — into the presence
of the Light of men. Our mediator is the Lord
himself, the spirit of light, a mediator not sent by
us to God to bring back his will, but come from
God to bring us himself We enter, like Moses,
into the presence of the visible, radiant God — only
how much more visible, more radiant ! As Moses
stood with uncovered face receiving the glory of
God full upon it, so with open, with uncovered
face, full in the light of the glory of God, in the
place of his presence, stand we — you and I, Corin-
thians. It is no reflected light we see, but the
glory of God shining in, shining out of, shining in
and from the face of Christ, the glory of the
Father, one with the Son. Israel saw but the
fading reflection of the glory of God on the face
of Moses ; we see the glory itself in the face of
Jesus.'

48 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

But in what follows, it seems to me that the
revised version misses the meaning almost as
much as the authorized, when, instead of ' behold-
ing as in a glass,' it gives ' reflecting as a mirror.'
The former is wrong ; the latter is far from fight.
The idea, with the figure, is that of a poet, not a
man of science. • The poet deals with the outer
show of things, which outer show is infinitely-
deeper in its relation to truth, as well as more
practically useful, than the analysis of the man of
science. Paul never thought of the mirror as
reflecting, as throwing back the rays of light from
its surface ; he thought of it as receiving, taking
into itself, the things presented to it — here, as
filling its bosom with the glory it looks upon.
When 1 see the face of my friend in a mirror, the
mirror seems to hold it in itself, to surround the
visage with its liquid embrace. The countenance
is there — ^down there in the depth of the mirror.
True, it shines radiant out of it, but it is not the
shining out of it that Paul has in his thought ; it
is the fact — the visual fact, which, according to
Wordsworth, the poet always seizes — of the mirror
holding in it the face.

That this is the way poet or prophet — Paul was

The Mirrors of the Lord 49

both — would think of the thing, especially in the
age of the apostle, I shall be able to make appear
even more probable by directing your notice to the
following passage from Dante — whose time, though
so much farther from that of the apostle than our
time from Dante's, was in many respects much
liker Paul's than ours.

The passage is this : — Dell' Inferno : Canto
xxiii. 25-27 :

E quel : ' S' io fossi d' impiombato vetro,
L' immagine di fuor tua non trarrei
Pill tosto a me, che quella dentro impetrc'

Here Virgil, with reference to the power he
had of reading the thoughts of his companion, says
to Dante :

' If I were of leaded glass,' — meaning, ' If I
were glass covered at the back with lead, so that I
was a mirror,' — ' I should not draw thy outward
image to me more readily than I gain thy inner
one ; ' — meaning, ' than now I know your thoughts.'

It seems, then, to me, that the true simple word
to represent the Greek, and the most literal as well
by which to translate it, is the verb mirror — when
the sentence, so far, would run thus : ' But we all,

III. E

50 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

with unveiled face, mirroring the glory of the
Lord, — .'

I must now go on to unfold the idea at work
in the heart of the apostle. For the mere correct-
ness of a translation is nothing, except it bring us
something deeper, or at least some fresher insight :
with him who cares for the words apart from what
the writer meant them to convey, I have nothing
to do : he must cease to ' pass for a man ' and begin
to be a man indeed, on the way to be a live soul,
before I can desire his intercourse. The prophet-
apostle seems to me, then, to say, ' We all, with
clear vision of the Lord, mirroring in our hearts
his glory, even as a mirror would take into itself
his face, are thereby changed into his likeness, his
glory working our glory, by the present power, in
our inmost being, of the Lord, the spirit' Our
mirroring of Christ, then, is one with the presence
of his spirit in us. The idea, you see, is not the
reflection, the radiating of the light of Christ on
others, though that were a figure lawful enough ;
but the taking into, and having in us, him working
to the changing of us.

That the thing signified transcends the sign,
outreaches the figure, is no discovery ; the thing

The Mirrors of the Lord 51

figured always belongs to a higher stratum, to
which the simile serves but as a ladder ; when the
climber has reached it, ' he then unto the ladder
turns his back.' It is but according to the law of
symbol, that the thing symbolized by the mirror
should have properties far beyond those of leaded
glass or polished metal, seeing it is a live soul
understanding that which it takes into its deeps
— holding it, and conscious of what it holds. It
mirrors by its will to hold in its mirror. Unlike
its symbol, it can hold not merely the outward
visual resemblance, but the inward likeness of the
person revealed by it ; it is open to the influences
of that which it embraces, and is capable of active
co-operation with them : the mirror and the thing
mirrored are of one origin and nature, and in
closest relation to each other. Paul's idea is, that
when we take into our understanding, our heart,
our conscience, our being, the glory of God, namely
Jesus Christ as he shows himself to our eyes, our
hearts, our consciences, he works upon us, and will
keep working, till we are changed to the very like-
ness we have thus mirrored in us ; for with his
likeness he comes himself, and dwells in us. He will
work until the same likeness is wrought out and

5 2 Unspokeji Sermons : TJm'd Series

perfected in us, the image, namely, of the humanity
of God, in which image we were made at first, but
which could never be developed in us except by
the indwelling of the perfect likeness. By the
power of Christ thus received and at home in us,
we are changed — the glory in him becoming glory
in us, his glory "changing us to glory, f

But we must beware of receiving this or any
symbol after the flesh, beware of interpreting it in
any fashion that partakes of the character of the
mere physical, psychical, or spirituo-mechanical.
The symbol deals with things far beyond the
deepest region whence symbols can be drawn.
The indwelling of Jesus in the soul of man, who
shall declare ! But let us note this, that the dwel-
ling of Jesus in us is the power of the spirit of
God upon us ; for ' the Lord is that spirit,' and
that Lord dwelling in us, we are changed 'even
as from the Lord the spirit.' When we think
Christ, Christ comes ; when we receive his image
into our spiritual mirror, he enters with it. Our
thought is not cut off from his. Our open receiv-
ing thought is his door to come in. When our
hearts turn to him, that is opening the door to
him, that is holding up our mirror to him ; then he

The Mirrors of the Loi'd 53

comes in, not by our thought only, not in our idea
only, but he comes himself, and of his own will —
comes in as we could not take him, but as he
can come and we receive him — enabled to receive
by his very coming the one welcome guest of the
whole universe. Thus the Lord, the spirit, becomes
the soul of our souls, becomes spiritually what he
always was creatively ; and as our spirit informs,
gives shape to our bodies, in like manner his soul
informs, gives shape to our souls. In this there
is nothing unnatural, nothing at conflict with our
being. It is but that the deeper soul that willed
and wills our souls, rises up, the infinite Life, into
the Self we call / and inc, but which lives imme-
diately from him, and is his very own property
and nature — unspeakably more his than ours : this
•deeper creative soul, working on and with his
creation upon higher levels, makes the / and me
more and more his, and himself more and more
ours ; until at length the glory of our existence
flashes upon us, we face full to the sun that en-
lightens what it sent forth, and know ourselves
alive with an infinite life, even the life of the
Father ; know that our existence is not the moon-
light of a mere consciousness of being, but the

54 Unspoken Serfuons : Tki^^d Series

sun-glory of a life justified by having become one
with its origin, thinking and feeling with the
primal Sun of life, from whom it was dropped away
that it might know and bethink itself, and return
to circle for ever in exultant harmony around him.
Then indeed we arc ; then indeed we have life ; the
life of Jesus has, through light, become life in us ;
the glory of God in the face of Jesus, mirrored in
our hearts, has made us alive ; we are one with
God for ever and ever.

What less than such a splendour of hope would
be worthy the revelation of Jesus ? Filled with the
soul of their Father, men shall inherit the glory of
their Father ; filled with themselves, they cast him
out, and rot. The company of the Lord, soul to
soul, is that which saves with life, his life of God-
devotion, the souls of his brethren. No other
saving can save them. They must receive the Son,
and through the Son the Father. What it cost the
Son to get so near to us that we could say Come in,
is the story of his life. He stands at the door and
knocks, and when we open to him he comes in, and
dwells with us, and we are transformed to the same
image of truth and purity and heavenly childhood.
Where power dwells, there is no force ; where the

The Mirrors of the Lord 55

spirit-Lord is, there is liberty. The Lord Jesus,
by free, potent communion with their inmost being,
win change his obedient brethren till in every
thought and impulse they are good like him, un-
selfish, neighbourly, brotherly like him, loving the
Father perfectly like him, ready to die for the truth
like him, caring like him for nothing in the universe
but the will of God, which is love, harmony, liberty,
beauty, and joy.

I do not know if we may call this having life in
ourselves ; but it is the waking up, the perfecting
in us of the divine life inherited from our Father in
heaven, who made us in his own image, whose
nature remains in us, and makes it the deepest
reproach to a man that he has neither heard his
voice at any time, nor seen his shape. He who
would thus live must, as a mirror draws into its
bosom an outward glory, receive into his ' heart of
heart' the inward glory of Jesus Christ, the Truth.

56 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

THE TRUTH.

I am the \.xyi\h.—John xiv. 6.

When the man of the five senses talks of truth.,
he regards it but as a predicate of something his-
torical or scientific proved a fact ; or, if he allows
that, for aught he knows, there may be higher truth,
yet, as he cannot obtain proof of it from without,
he acts as if under no conceivable obligation to
seek any other satisfaction concerning it. What-
ever appeal be made to the highest region of his
nature, such a one behaves as if it were the part of
a wise man to pay it no heed, because it does not
come within the scope of the lower powers of that
nature. According to the word of the man, how-
ever, truth means more than fact, more than relation
of facts or persons, more than loftiest abstraction
of metaphysical entity — means being and life, will
and action ; for he says, '/ am the truth.'

I desire to help those whom I may to under-
stand more of what is meant by the truth, not for

The Trittli 57

the sake of definition, or logical discrimination, but
that, when they hear the word from the mouth of the
Lord, the right idea may rise in their minds ; that
the word may neither be to them a void sound, nor
call up either a vague or false notion of what he
meant by it. If he says, ' I am the truth,' it must,
to say the least, be well to know what he means
by the word with whose idea he identifies himself
And at once we may premise that he can mean
nothing merely intellectual, such as may be set
forth and left there ; he means something vital, so
vital that the whole of its necessary relations are
subject to it, so vital that it includes everything
else which, in any lower plane, may go or have
gone by the same name. Let us endeavour to
arrive at his meaning by a gently ascending stair.

A thing being so, the word that says it is so,
is the truth. But the fact may be of no value in
itself, and our knowledge of it of no value either. Of
most facts it may be said that the truth concerning
them is of no consequence. For instance, it cannot
be in itself important whether on a certain morning
I took one side of the street or the other. It may
be of importance to some one to know which I
took, but in itself it is of none. It would therefore

58 Unspoken Sermons : Third Seines

be felt unfit if I said, ' It is (2 truth that I walked on
the sunny side.' The correct word would be a fact,
not a trutJi. If the question arose whether a state-
ment concerning the thing were correct, we should
still be in the region of fact or no fact ; but when
we come to ask whether the statement was true or
false, then we are concerned with the matter as the
assertion of a human being, and ascend to another
plane of things. It may be of no consequence
which side I was upon, or it may be of consequence
to some one to know which, but it is of vital im-
portance to the witness and to any who love
him, whether or not he believes the statement he
makes — whether the man himself is true or false.
Concerning the thing it can be but a question of
fact ; it remains a question of fact even whether the
man has or has not spoken the truth ; but con-
cerning the man it is a question of truth : he is
either a pure soul, so far as this thing witnesses, or
a false soul, capable and guilty of a lie. In this
relation it is of no consequence whether the man
spoke the fact or not ; if he meant to speak the
fact, he remains a true man.

Here I would anticipate so far as to say that
there are ti'utJis as well as facts, and lies against

The Timth 59

truths as well as against facts. When the Phari-
sees said Corbap, they lied against the truth that a
man must honour his father and mother.

Let us go up now from the region of facts that
seem casual, to those facts that are invariable, by
us unchangeable, which therefore involve what we
call latv. It will be seen at once that the fact
here is of more dignity, and the truth or falsehood
of a statement in this region of more consequence
in itself It is a small matter whether the water in
my jug was frozen on such a morning ; but it is a
fact of great importance that at thirty-two degrees
of Fahrenheit water always freezes. We rise a
step here in the nature of the facts concerned : are
we come therefore into the region of truths ? Is it
a truth that water freezes at thirty-two degrees ?
I think not. There is no principle, open to us,
involved in the changeless fact. The principle that
lies at the root of it in the mind of God must be a
truth, but to the human mind the fact is as yet
only a fact. The word tnith ought to be kept for
higher things. There are those that think such
facts the highest that can be known ; they put
therefore the highest word they know to the highest
thing they know, and call the facts of nature truths ;

6o Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

but to me it seems that, however high you come in
your generalization, however wide you make your
law — including, for instance, all solidity under the
law of freezing — you have not risen higher than the
statement that such and such is an invariable fact,
Call it a law if you will — a law of nature if you
choose — that it ahvays is so, but not a truth. It
cannot be to us a truth until we descry the reason
of its existence, its relation to mind and intent, yea
to self-existence. Tell us why it vmst be so, and
you state a truth. When we come to see that a
law is such, because it is the embodiment of a
certain eternal thought, beheld by us in it, a fact
of the being of God, the facts of which alone are
truths, then indeed it will be to us, not a law
merely, but an embodied truth. A law of God's
nature is a way he would have us think of him ; it
is a necessary truth of all being. When a law of
Nature makes us see this ; when we say, I under-
stand that law ; I see why it ought to be ; it is
just like God ; then it rises, not to the dignity of a
truth in itself, but to the truth of its own nature —
namely, a revelation of character, nature, and will
in God. It is a picture of something in God, a
word that tells a fact about God, and is therefore far

The Truth 6i

nearer being called a truth than anything below it.
As a simple illustration : What notion should we
have of the unchanging and unchangeable, without
the solidity of matter ? If, such as we are, we had
nothing solid about us, where would be our thinking
about God and truth and law ?

But there is a region perhaps not so high as
this from the scientific point of view, where yet the
word truth may begin to be rightly applied. I
believe that every fact in nature is a revelation of
God, is there such as it is because God is such as
he is ; and I suspect that all its facts impress
us so that we learn God unconsciously. True, we
cannot think of any one fact thus, except as we
find the soul of it — its fact of God ; but from the
moment when first we come into contact with the
world, it is to us a revelation of God, his things
seen, by which we come to know the things unseen.
How should we imagine what we may of God,
without the firmament over our heads, a visible
sphere, yet a formless infinitude ! What idea could
we have of God without the sky ? The truth of
the sky is what it makes us feel of the God that
sent it out to our eyes. If you say the sky could
not but be so and such, I grant it — with God at

62 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

the root of it. There is nothing for us to conceive
in its stead — therefore indeed it must be so. In
its discovered laws, hght seems to me to be
such because God is such. Its so-called laws are
the waving of his garments, waving so because he
is thinking and loving and walking inside them.

We are here in a region far above that com-
monly claimed for science, open only to the heart
of the child and the childlike man and woman —
a region in which the poet is among his own
things, and to which he has often to go to fetch
them. For things as they are, not as science
deals with them, are the revelation of God to his
children. I would not be misunderstood : there is
no fact of science not yet incorporated in a law,
no law of science that has got beyond the hypo-
thetic and tentative, that has not in it the will
of God, and therefore may not reveal God ; but
neither fact nor law is there for the sake of fact
or law ; each is but a mean to an end ; in the
perfected end we find the intent, and there God
— not in the laws themselves, save as his means.
For that same reason, human science cannot dis-
cover God ; for human science is but the backward
undoing of the tapestry-web of God's science.

The Tritt/i 63

works with its back to him, and is always leaving
him — his intent, that is, his perfected work — behind
it, always going farther and farther away from the
point where his work culminates in revelation.
Doubtless it thus makes some small intellectual
approach to him, but at best it can come only to
his back ; science will never find the face of God ;
while those who would reach his heart, those who,
like Dante, are returning thither where they are,
will find also the spring-head of his science. Ana-
lysis is well, as death is well ; analysis is death, not
life. It discovers a little of the way God walks to
his ends, but in so doing it forgets and leaves the
end itself behind. I do not say the man of science
does so, but the very process of his work is such a
leaving of God's ends behind. It is a following
back of his footsteps, too often without appreciation
of the result for which the feet took those steps.
To rise from the perfected work is the swifter and
loftier ascent. If the man could find out why God
worked so, then he would be discovering God ;
but even then he would not be discovering the best
and the deepest of God ; for his means cannot be
so great as his ends. I must make myself clearer.
Ask a man of mere science, what is the truth of

64 Unspoken Sermons : Third Seines

a flower : he will pull it to pieces, show you its
parts, explain how they operate, how they minister
each to the life of the flower ; he will tell you what
changes are wrought in it by scientific cultivation.;
where it lives originally, where it can live ; the effects
upon it of another climate ; what part the insects
bear in its varieties — and doubtless many more
facts about it. Ask the poet what is the truth of the
flower, and he will answer : ' Why, the flower itself,
the perfect flower, and what it cannot help saying
to him who has ears to hear it.' The truth of the
flower is, not the facts about it, be they correct as
ideal science itself, but the shining, glowing, glad-
dening, patient thing throned on its stalk — the com-
peller of smile and tear from child and prophet. The
man of science laughs at this, because he is only a
man of science, and does not know what it means ;
but the poet and the child care as little for his
laughter as the birds of God, as Dante calls the
angels, for his treatise on aerostation. The children
of God must always be mocked by the children of
the world, whether in the church or out of it —
children with sharp ears and eyes, but dull hearts.
Those that hold love the only good in the world,
understand and smile at the world's children, and

The Truth 65

can do very well without anything they have got
to tell them. In the higher state to which their
love is leading them, they will speedily outstrip the
men of science, for they have that which is at the
root of science, that for the revealing of which God's
science exists. What shall it profit a man to know
all things, and lose the bliss, the consciousness of
well-being, which alone can give value to his know-
ledge .^

God's science in the flower exists for the exist-
ence of the flower in its relation to his children. If
we understand, if we are at one with, if we love the
flower, we have that for which the science is there,
that which alone can equip us for true search into
the means and ways by which the divine idea of
the flower was wrought out to be presented to us.
The idea of God is the flower ; his idea is not the
botany of the flower. Its botany is but a thing of
ways and means — of canvas and colour and brush
in relation to the picture in the painter's brain. The
mere intellect can never find out that which owes
its being to the heart supreme. The relation of
the intellect to that which is born of the heart is
an unreal except it be a humble one. The idea
of God, I repeat, is the flower. He thought it ;
III. F

66 J Uitspoken Sermoiis : Third Series

invented its means ; sent it, a gift of himself, to the
eyes and hearts of his children. When we see how
they are loved by the ignorant and degraded, we
may well believe the flowers have a place in the
history of the world, as written for the archives of
heaven, which we are yet a long way from under-
standing, and which science could not, to all
eternity, understand, or enable to understand.
Watch that child ! He has found one of his
silent and motionless brothers, with God's cloth-
ing upon it, God's thought in its face. In what
a smile breaks out the divine understanding between
them ! Watch his mother when he takes it home
to her— no nearer understanding it than he ! It is
no old association that brings those tears to her
eyes, powerful in that way as are flowers, and things
far inferior to flowers ; it is God's thought, unrecog-
nized as such, holding communion with her. She
weeps with a delight inexplicable. It is only a
daisy ! only a primrose ! only a pheasant-eye-narcis-
sus ! only a lily of the field ! only a snowdrop ! only
a sweet-pea ! only a brave yellow crocus ! But here
to her is no mere fact ; here is no law of nature ;
here is a truth of nature, the truth of a flower— a
perfect thought from the heart of God — a truth of

The Truik 67

God ! — not an intellectual truth, but a divine fact,
a dim revelation, a movement of the creative soul !
Who but a father could think the flowers for his
little ones ? We are nigh the region now in which
the Lord's word is at home — ' I am the truth.'

I will take an illustrative instance altogether to
my mind and special purpose. What, I ask, is the
truth of water ? Is it that it is formed of hydrogen
and oxygen ? — That the chemist has now another
mode of stating Xhefact of water, will not affect my
illustration. His new mode will probably be one
day yet more antiquated than mine is now. — Is it for
the sake of the fact that hydrogen and oxygen
combined form water, that the precious thing exists ?
Is oxygen-and-hydrogen the divine idea of water ?
Or has God put the two together only that man
might separate and find them out ? He allows
his child to pull his toys to pieces ; but were they
made that he might pull them to pieces ? He were
a child not to be envied for whom his inglorious
father would make toys to such an end ! A school-
examiner might see therein the best use of a toy, but
not a father ! Find for us what in the constitution of
the two gases makes them fit and capable to be thus
honoured in forming the lovely thing, and you will

68 Unspoken Sermons : TJiird Series

give us a revelation about more than water, namely
about the God who made oxygen and hydrogen.
There is no water in oxygen, no water in hydrogen :
it comes bubbling fresh from the imagination of
the living God, rushing from under the great white
throne of the glacier. The very thought of it makes
one gasp with an' elemental joy no metaphysician
can analyse. The water itself, that dances, and
sings, and slakes the wonderful thirst — symbol and
picture of that draught for which the woman of
Samaria made her prayer to Jesus — this lovely thing
itself, whose very wetness is a delight to every inch
of the human body in its embrace — this live thing
which, if I might, I would have running through my
room, yea, babbling along my table — this water is its
own self its own truth, and is therein a truth of God.
Let him who would know the love of the maker,
become sorely athirst, and drink of the brook by
the way — then lift up his heart — not at that
moment to the maker of oxygen and hydrogen,
but to the inventor and mediator of thirst and
water, that man might foresee a little of what his
soul may find in God. If he become not then as a
hart panting for the water-brooks, let him go back
to his science and its husks : they will at last make

The Truth 69

him thirsty as the victim in the dust-tower of the
Persian. As well may a man think to describe the
joy of drinking by giving thirst and water for its
analysis, as imagine he has revealed anything about
water by resolving it into its scientific elements.
Let a man go to the hillside and let the brook sing
to him till he loves it, and he will find himself far
nearer the fountain of truth than the triumphal
car of the chemist will ever lead the shouting
crew of his half-comprehending followers. He will
draw from the brook the water of joyous tears, ' and
worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the
sea, and the fountains of waters.'

The truth of a thing, then, is the blossom of it,
the thing it is made for, the topmost stone set on
with rejoicing ; truth in a man's imagination is the
power to recognize this truth of a thing ; and wher-
ever, in anything that God has made, in the glory
of it, be it sky or flower or human face, we see the
glory of God, there a true imagination is behold-
ing a truth of God. And now we must advance to
a yet higher plane.

We have seen that the moment whatever goes
by the name of truth comes into connection with
man ; the moment that, instead of merely mirroring

70 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

itself in his intellect as a thing outside of him, it
comes into contact with him as a being of action ;
the moment the knowledge of it affects or ought
to affect his sense of duty, it becomes a thing of far
nobler import ; the question of truth enters upon
a higher phase, looks out of a loftier window. A
fact which in itself is of no value, becomes at once
a matter of life and death — moral life and death,
when a man has the choice, the imperative choice
of being true or false concerning it. When the
truth, the heart, the summit, the crown of a thing,
is perceived by a man, he approaches the fountain
of truth whence the thing came, and perceiving
God by understanding what is, becomes more of a
man, more of the being he was meant to be. In
virtue of this truth perceived, he has relations with
the universe undeveloped in him till then. But
far higher will the doing of the least, the most
insignificant duty raise him. He begins thereby
to be a true man. A man may delight in the
vision and glory of a truth, and not himself be
true. The man whose vision is weak, but who, as
far as he sees, and desirous to see farther, does the
thing he sees, is a true man. If a man knows what
is, and says it is not, his knowing does not make

The Ti'itih 'ji

him less than a liar. The man who recognizes the
truth of any human relation, and neglects the duty
involved, is not a true man. The man who knows
the laws of nature, and does not heed them, the
more he teaches them to others, the less is he a
true man. But he may obey them all and be the
falsest of men, because of far higher and closer
duties which he neglects. The man who takes
good care of himself and none of his brother and
sister, is false. A man may be a poet, aware of
the highest truth of a thing, of that beauty which
is the final cause of its existence ; he may draw
thence a notion of the creative loveliness that
thought it out ; he may be a man who would not
tell a lie, or steal, or slander^ — and yet he may not
be a true man, inasmuch as the essentials of man-
hood are not his aim : having nowise come to the
flower of his own being, nowise, in his higher degree,
attained the truth of cr thhig — namely, that for which
he exists, the creational notion of him — neither is he
striving after the same. There are relations closer
than those of the facts around him, plainer than
those that seem to bring the maker nigh to him,
which he is failing to see, or seeing fails to ac-
knowledge, or acknowledging fails to fulfil. Man

72 Unspoken Sermons : TJiird Series

is man only in the doing of the truth, perfect man
only in the doing of the highest truth, which is the
fulfilling of his relations to his origin. But he has
relations with his fellow man, closer infinitely than
with any of the things around him, and to many a
man far plainer than his relations with God. Now
the nearer is plai-ner that he may step on it, and
rise to the higher, till then the less plain. These
relations make a large part of his being, are
essential to his very existence, and spring from the
very facts of the origination of his being. They
are the relation of thought to thought, of being to
being, of duty to duty. The very nature of a man
depends upon or is one with these relations. They
are truths, and the man is a true man as he fulfils
them. Fulfilling them perfectly, he is himself a
truth, a living truth. As regarded merely by the
intellect, these relations are facts of man's nature ;
but that they are of man's nature makes them
truths, and the fulfilments of them are duties. He
is so constituted as to understand them at first
more than he can love them, with the resulting
advantage of having thereby the opportunity of
choosing them purely because they are true ; so
doing he chooses to love them, and is enabled to love

The Ti'iith 73

them in the doing, which alone can truly reveal
them to him, and make the loving of them possible.
Then they cease to show themselves in the form of
duties, and appear as they more truly are, ab-
solute truths, essential realities, eternal delights.
The man is a true man who chooses duty ; he is
a perfect man who at length never thinks of duty,
who forgets the name of it. The duty of Jesus
was the doing in lower forms than the perfect that
which he loved perfectly, and did perfectly in the
highest forms also. Thus he fulfilled all right-
eousness. One who went to the truth by mere
impulse, would be a holy animal, not a true man.
Relations, truths, duties, are shown to the man
away beyond him, that he may choose them, and
be a child of God, choosing righteousness hke him.
Hence the whole sad victorious human tale, and
the glory to be revealed !

The moral philosopher who regards duties only
as facts of his system ; nay, even the man who
regards them as truths, essential realities of his
humanity, but goes no farther, is essentially a liar,
a man of untruth. He is a man indeed, but not
a true man. He is a man in possibility, but not
a real man yet. The recognition of these things is

74 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

the imperative obligation to fulfil them. Not ful-
filling these relations, the man is undoing the right
of his own existence, destroying his raison d'etre,
making of himself a monster, a live reason why-
he should not live, for nothing on those terms
could ever have begun to be. His presence is a
claim upon his creator for destruction.

The facts of human relation, then, are truths in-
deed, and of awfullest import. ' Whosoever hateth
his brother is a murderer ; and ye know that no
murderer hath eternal life abiding in him ! ' The
man who lives a hunter after pleasure, not a
labourer in the fields of duty, who thinks of himself
as if he were alone on the earth, is in himself a lie.
Instead of being the man he looks, the man he was
made to be, he lives as the beasts seem to live —
with this difference, I trust, that they are rising,
while he, so far as lies in himself, is sinking. But
he cannot be allowed to sink beyond God's reach ;
hence all the holy — that is, healing — miseries that
come upon him, of which he complains as so hard
and unfair : they are for the compelling of the
truth he will not yield — a painful suasion to be
himself, to be a truth.

But suppose, for the sake of my progressive un-

The Truth 75

folding, that a man did everything required of him
— fulfilled all the relations to his fellows of which I
have been speaking, was toward them at least, a
true man ; he would yet feel, doubtless would feel it
the more, that something was lacking to him — lack-
ing to his necessary well-being. Like a live flower,
he would feel that he had not yet blossomed, and
could not tell what the blossom ought to be. In
this direction the words of the Lord point, when he
says to the youth, ' If thou wouldst be perfect.'
The man whom I suppose, would feel that his exist-
ence was not yet justified to itself, that the truth
of his being and nature was not yet revealed to his
consciousness. He would remain unsatisfied ; and
the cause would be that there was in him a relation,
and that the deepest, closest, and strongest, which
had not yet come into live fact, which had not yet
become a truth in him, toward which he was not
true, whereby his being remained untrue, he was
not himself, was not ripened into the divine idea,
which alone can content itself A child with a
child's heart who does not even know that he has
a father, yet misses him — with his whole nature,
even if not with his consciousness. This relation
has not yet so far begun to be fulfilled in him, as

76 Unspoken Serinons : TJiird Series

that the coming blossom should send before it
patience and hope enough to enable him to Hve
by faith without sight. When the flower begins
to come, the human plant begins to rejoice in the
glory of God not yet revealed, the inheritance of
the saints in light ; with uplifted stem and forward-
leaning bud expects the hour when the lily of God's
field shall know itself alive, with God himself for its
heart and its atmosphere ; the hour when God and
the man shall be one, and all that God cares for shall
be the man's. But again I forget my progression.

The highest truth to the intellect, the abstract
truth, is the relation in which man stands to the
source of his being — his will to the will whence it
became a will, his love to the love that kindled his
power to love, his intellect to the intellect that
lighted his. If a man deal with these things only as
things to be dealt with, as objects of thought, as
ideas to be analysed and arranged in their due order
and right relation, he treats them as facts and not as
truths, and is no better, probably much the worse,
for his converse with them, for he knows in a mea-
sure, and is false to all that is most worthy of his
faithfulness.

But when the soul, or heart, or spirit, or what

The Trtith 'jj

you please to call that which is the man himself and
not his body, sooner or later becomes aware that he
needs some one above him, whom to obey, in
whom to rest, from whom to seek deliverance from
what in himself is despicable, disappointing, un-
worthy even of his own interest ; when he is
aware of an opposition in him, which is not har-
mony ; that, while he hates it, there is yet present
with him, and seeming to be himself, what some-
times he calls the old Adam, sometimes the flesh,
sometimes Jiis lower nature, sometimes Jiis evil
self; and sometimes recognizes as simply that part
of his being where God is not ; then indeed is the
man in the region of truth, and beginning to come
true in himself Nor will it be long ere he dis-
cover that there is no part in him with which he
would be at strife, so God were there, so that it
were true, what it ought to be — in right relation
to the whole ; for, by whatever name called, the old
Adam, or antecedent horse, or dog, or tiger, it would
then fulfil its part holily, intruding upon nothing, sub-
ject utterly to the rule of the higher ; horse or dog
or tiger, it would be good horse, good dog, good tiger.
When the man bows down before a power that
can account for him, a power to whom he is no

78 Unspoken Sermons : Thh'-d Series

mystery as he is to himself; a power that knows
whence he came and whither he is going ; who knows
why he loves this and hates that, why and where he
began to go wrong ; who can set him right, longs
indeed to set him right, making of him a creature
to look up to himself without shadow of doubt,
anxiety or fear, confident as a child whom his father
is leading by the hand to the heights of happy-
making truth, knowing that where he is wrong, the
father is right and will set him right ; when the
man feels his whole being in the embrace of self-
responsible paternity — then the man is bursting into
his flower ; then the truth of his being, the eternal
fact at the root of his new name, his real nature, his
idea — born in God at first, and responsive to the
truth, the being of God, his origin — begins to show
itself ; then his nature is almost in harmony
with itself For, obeying the will that is the cause
of his being, the cause of that which demands of
itself to be true, and that will being righteousness
and love and truth, he begins to stand on the apex
of his being, to know himself divine. He begins to
feel himself free. The truth— not as known to his
intellect, but as revealed in his own sense of being
true, known by his essential consciousness of his

The TriUk 79

divine condition, without which his nature is neither
his own nor God's — trueness has made him free.
Not any abstract truth, not all abstract truth, not
truth its very metaphysical self, held by purest in-
sight into entity, can make any man free ; but the
truth done, the truth loved, the truth lived by the
man ; the truth of and not merely in the man
himself ; the honesty that makes the man himself
a child of the honest God.

When a man is, with his whole nature, loving
and willing the truth, he is then a live truth. But
this he has not originated in himself He has seen
it and striven for it, but not originated it. The one
originating, living, visible truth, embracing all
truths in all relations, is Jesus Christ. He is true ;
he is the live Truth. His truth, chosen and willed
by him, the ripeness of his being, the flower of his
sonship which is his nature, the crown of his one
topmost perfect relation acknowledged and gloried
in, is his absolute obedience to his father. The
obedient Jesus is Jesus the Truth. He is true and
the root of all truth and development of truth in
men. Their very being, however far from the true
human, is the undeveloped Christ in them, and his
likeness to Christ is the truth of a man, even as the

8o Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

perfect meaning of a flower is the truth of a flower.
Every man, according to the divine idea of him, must
come to the truth of that idea ; and under every
form of Christ is the Christ. The truth of every man,
I say, is the perfected Christ in him. As Christ is
the blossom of humanity, so the blossom of every
man is the Christ perfected in him. The vital
force of humanity working in him is Christ ; he is
his root — the generator and perfecter of his indivi-
duality. The stronger the pure will of the man to
be true ; the freer and more active his choice ; the
more definite his individuality, ever the more is
the man and all that is his, Christ's. Without him
he could not have been ; being, he could not have
become capable of truth ; capable of truth, he could
never have loved it ; loving and desiring it, he could
not have attained to it. Nothing but the heart-pre-
sence, the humanest sympathy, and whatever deeper
thing else may be betwixt the creating Truth and
the responding soul, could make a man go on hoping,
until at last he forget himself, and keep open house
for God to come and go. He gives us the will where-
with to will, and the power to use it, and the help
needed to supplement the power, whatever in any
case the need may be ; but we ourselves must will

The Truth 8i

the truth, and for that the Lord is waiting, for the
victory of God his father in the heart of his child.
In this alone can he see of the travail of his soul,
in this alone be satisfied. The work is his, but we
must take our willing share. When the blossom
breaks forth in us, the more it is ours the more it
is his, for the highest creation of the Father, and
that pre-eminently through the Son, is the being
that can, like the Father and the Son, of his own
self will what is right. The groaning and travail-
ing, the blossom and the joy, are the Father's and
the Son's and ours. The will, the power of willing,
may be created, but the willing is begotten.
Because God wills first, man wills also.

When my being is consciously and willedly in
the hands of him who called it to live and think
and suffer and be glad — given back to him by a
perfect obedience — I thenceforward breathe the
breath, share the life of God himself. Then I am
free, in that I am true — which means one with the
Father. And freedom knows itself to be free-
dom. When a man is true, if he were in hell!
he could not be miserable. He is right with \
himself because right with him whence he came. ,
To be right with God is to be right with the I

III. G

82 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

A universe ; one with the power, the love, the will
of the mighty Father, the cherisher of joy, the
lord of laughter, whose are all glories, all hopes,
who loves everything, and hates nothing but

[selfishness, which he will not have in his kingdogi^
Christ then is the Lord of life ; his life is the
light of men ; the light mirrored in them changes
them into the image of him, the Truth ; and thus
tJie Trutli, luho is the Son, makes them free.

FREEDOM.

The Truth shall make you free. . . . Whosoever committeth
sin, is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house
for ever : but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make
you free, ye shall be free '\xA&&d..^John viii. 32, 34-36.

As this passage stands, I have not been able to
make sense of it. No man could be in the house
of the Father in virtue of being the servant of
sin ; yet this man is in the house as a servant, and
the house in which he serves is not the house of
sin, but the house of the Father. The utterance is
confused at best, and the reasoning faulty. He
must be in the house of the Father on some other
ground than sin. This, had no help come, would
have been sufficient cause for leaving the passage
alone, as one where, perhaps, the words of the Lord
were misrepresented — where, at least, perceiving
more than one fundamental truth involved in the
passage, I failed to follow the argument. I do not
see that I could ever have suggested where the

84 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

corruption, if any, lay. Most difficulties of similar
nature have originated, like this, I can hardly doubt,
with some scribe who, desiring to explain what he
did not understand, wrote his worthless gloss on
the margin : the next copier took the words for
an omission that ought to be replaced in the body
of the text, and inserting them, falsified the utter-
ance, and greatly obscured its intention. What do
we not owe to the critics who have searched the
scriptures, and found what really was written ! In
the present case, Dr. Westcott's notation gives us
to understand that there is another with ' a reason-
able probability of being the true reading.' The
difference is indeed small to the eye, but is great
enough to give us fine gold instead of questionable
ore. In an alternative of the kind, I must hope in
what seems logical against what seems illogical ;
in what seems radiant against what seems trite.

What I take for the true reading then, I English
thus : ' Every one committing sin is a slave. But
the slave does not remain in the house for ever ;
the son remaineth for ever. If then the son shall
make you free, you shall in reality be free.' The
authorized version gives, ' Whosoever committeth
sin, is the servant of sin ; ' the revised version gives,

Freedom 85

* Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant
of sm ; ' both accepting the reading that has the
words, ' of sin! The statement is certainly in itself
true, but appears to me useless for the argument
that follows. And I think it may have been what
I take to be the true reading, that suggested to the
apostle Paul what he says in the beginning of the
fourth chapter of his Epistle to the Galatians — words
of spirit and life from which has been mistakenly
drawn the doctrine of adoption, merest poison to
the child-heart. The words of the Lord here are not
that he who sins is the slave of sin, true utterly as
that is ; but that he is a slave, and the argument
shows that he means a slave to God. The two are
perfectly consistent. No amount of slavery to sin
can keep a man from being as much the slave of God
as God chooses in his mercy to make him. It is
his sin makes him a slave instead of a child. His
slavery to sin is his ruin ; his slavery to God is his
only hope. God indeed does not love slavery ; he
hates it ; he will have children, not slaves ; but he
may keep a slave in his house a long time in the
hope of waking up the poor slavish nature to aspire
to the sonship which belongs to him, which is his
birthright. But the slave is not to be in the house

86 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

for ever. The father is not bound to keep his son
a slave because the foolish child prefers it.

Whoever will not do what God desires of him,
is a slave whom God can compel to do it, however
he may bear with him. He who, knowing this, or
fearing punishment, obeys God, is still a slave, but
a slave who comes within hearing of the voice of
his master. There are, however, far higher than he,
who yet are but slaves. Those to whom God is
not all in all, are slaves. They may not commit
great sins ; they may be trying to do right ; but
so long as they serve God, as they call it, from duty,
and do not know him as their father, the joy of
their being, they are slaves — good slaves, but
slaves. If they did not try to do their duty, they
would be bad slaves. They are by no means so
slavish as those that serve from fear, but they are
slaves ; and because they are but slaves, they can
fulfil no righteousness, can do no duty perfectly,
but must ever be trying after it wearily and in pain,
knowing well that if they stop trying, they are lost.
They are slaves indeed, for they would be glad to
be adopted by one who is their own father! Where
then are the sons ? I know none, I answer, who
are yet utterly and entirely sons or daughters.

Freedom Z"]

There may be such — God knows ; I have not
known them ; or, knowing them, have not been
myself such as to be able to recognize them. But
I do know some who are enough sons and daughters
to be at war with the slave in them, who are not
content to be slaves to their father. Nothing 1
have seen or known of sonship, comes near the
glory of the thing ; but there are thousands of sons
and daughters, though their number be yet only a
remnant, who are siding with the father of their
spirits against themselves, against all that divides
them from him from whom they have come, but
out of whom they have never come, seeing that in
him they live and move and have their being.
Such are not slaves ; they are true though not
perfect children ; they are fighting along with God
against the evil separation ; they are breaking at
the middle wall of partition. Only the rings of
their fetters are left, and they are struggling to
take them off They are children — with more or
less of the dying slave in them ; they know it is
there, and what it is, and hate the slavery in them,
and try to slay it. The real slave is he who does
not seek to be a child ; who does not desire to end
his slavery ; who looks upon the claim of the child

88 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

as presumption ; who cleaves to the traditional
authorized service of forms and ceremonies, and
does not know the will of him who made the seven
stars and Orion, much less cares to obey it ; who
never lifts up his heart to cry ' Father, what wouldst
thou have me to do ? ' Such are continually be-
traying their slavery by their complaints. ' Do we
not well to be angry ? ' they cry with Jonah ; and,
truly, being slaves, I do not know how they are to
help it. When they are sons and daughters, they
will no longer complain of the hardships, and
miseries, and troubles of life ; no longer grumble
at their aches and pains, at the pinching of their
poverty, at the hunger that assails them ; no longer
be indignant at their rejection by what is called
Society. Those who believe in their own perfect
father, can ill blame him for anything they do
not like. Ah, friend, it may be you and I are
slaves, but there are such sons and daughters as I
speak of

The slaves of sin rarely grumble at that
slavery ; it is their slavery to God they grumble
at ; of that alone they complain — of the painful
messengers he sends to deliver them from their
slavery both to sin and to himself They must

Freedom 89

be sons or slaves. They cannot rid themselves
of their owner. Whether they deny God, or mock
him by acknowledging and not heeding him, or
treat him as an arbitrary, formal monarch ; whether,
taking no trouble to find out what pleases him,
they do dull things for his service he cares nothing
about, or try to propitiate him by assuming with
strenuous effort some yoke the Son never wore, and
never called on them to wear, they are slaves, and
not the less slaves that they are slaves to God ; they
are so thoroughly slaves, that they do not care
to get out of their slavery by becoming sons and
daughters, by finding the good of life where alone
it can or could lie. Could a creator make a creature
whose well-being should not depend on himself?
And if he could, would the creature be the greater
for that ? Which, the creature he made more, or
the creature he made less dependent on himself,
would be the greater ? The slave in heart would
immediately, with Milton's Satan, reply, that the
farthest from him who made him must be the freest,
thus acknowledging his very existence a slavery,
and but two kinds in being — a creator, and as
many slaves as he pleases to make, whose refusal
to obey is their unknown protest against their own

/ %;.^)f,-.; .sv,-,,^>,,y • Third Scric

essence, lu-in^- itsciriuust, loi what t]\cy cill liberty,
be \-OjH»<b'Atcxl ! Creation itself, to i^o by their lines
ol" life, is an injustice 1 G<h1 h.ul no vii;h( U'> eieatc
beings less than hin\seir; and as he could iiot
eifatc equal, he ought not to have created ! lUit
they do not complain of haviujj been created ;
they complain of being I'cquircd to Ak^ justice.
They will not obey, but, his own handiwvMk, ravish
front his work every advantagxj they can ! The)-
desire to be free with another kit\d of fiecHKim
thai\ that with w hich God is fix^e ; unknowing, they
seek a \\\<wxt complete skvery» There is, in truth,
\io iwid w>ay between absolute harmony w ith the
I'ather at\d the oi^ndition of slaws— ^submissive, im-
rebellious. If the latter, their \?ery i-ebellion is by
the stix::ngth of the leather in them. Of divine
essence, they thrust their existence iti the face of
their essence, their ow n nature.

Yet is their \?ery i"ebcllioi\ in some sense but
the risit\g in tlxein of his spirit Against their false
noti<M\ of him— i^aitist the lies they hold ^ncerning
him. They <\o tiot see thai, if his \\\Mk, namely, they
thcn\selves, are the chief jv>y tv> thonsclvexS, much
n^oi'C j\nght the li(V^ that works them be a glory
and joy to thcni the work --inasmuch as it is neaix^r

Freedom g i

to them than they to themselves, causing them to
be, and extends, without breach of relation, so
infinitely above and beyond them. For nothing
can come so close as that which creates ; the
nearest, strongest, dearest relation possible is
between creator and created. Where this is
denied, the schism is the widest ; where it is
acknowledged and fulfilled, the closeness is un-
speakable. But ever remains what cannot be said^
and I sink defeated. The very protest of the
rebel against slavery, comes at once of the truth
of God in him, which he cannot all cast from him,
and of a slavery too low to love truth — a meanness
that will take all and acknowledge nothing, as if
his very being was a disgrace to him. The liberty
of the God that would have his 'creature free, is in
contest with the slavery of the creature who would
cut his own stem from his root that he might call it
his own and love it ; who rejoices in his own con-
sciousness, instead of the life of that consciousness ;
who poises himself on the tottering wall of his own
being, instead of the rock on which that being is
built. Such a one regards his own dominion over
himself — the rule of the greater by the less, inas-
much as the conscious self is less than the self —

92 Unspoken Sennons : ThiJ'd Series

as a freedom infinitely greater than the range of
the universe of God's being. If he says, ' At least
I have it my own way ! ' I answer, You do not
know what is your w^ay and what is not. You
know nothing of whence your impulses, your desires,
your tendencies, your likings come. They may
spring now from" some chance, as of nerves dis-
eased ; now from some roar of a wandering bodi-
less devil ; now from some infant hate in your
heart ; now from the greed or lawlessness of some
ancestor you would be ashamed of if you knew
him ; or it may be now from some far-piercing
chord of a heavenly orchestra : the moment it
comes up into your consciousness, you call it your
own way, and glory in it ! Two devils amusing
themselves with a duet of inspiration, one at each
ear, might soon make that lordly me )'OU are so in
love with, rejoice in the freedom of willing the
opposite each alternate moment ; and at length
drive you mad at finding that you could not, will
as you would, make choice of a way and its op-
posite simultaneously. The whole question rests
and turns on the relation of creative and created,
of which relation few seem to have the conscious-
ness yet developed. To live without the eternal

Freedom 93

creative life is an impossibility ; freedom from God
can only mean an incapacity for seeing the facts
of existence, an incapability of understanding the
glory of the creature who makes common cause
with his creator in his creation of him, who wills
that the lovely will calling him into life and giving
him choice, should finish making him, should draw
him into the circle of the creative heart, to joy
that he lives by no poor power of his own will,
but is one with the causing life of his life, in
closest breathing and willing, vital and claimant
oneness with the life of all life. Such a creature .
knows the life of the infinite Father as the very i
flame of his hfe, and joys that nothing is done or i.
will be done in the universe in which the Father |
will not make him all of a sharer that it is possible i
for perfect generosity to make him. If you say i
this is irreverent, I doubt if you have seen the ;
God manifest in Jesus. But all will be well, for the \
little god of your poor content will starve your soul \
to misery, and the terror of the eternal death creep-
ing upon you, will compel you to seek a perfect
father. Oh, ye hide-bound Christians, the Lord is
not straitened, but ye are straitened in your nar-
row unwilling souls ! Some of you need to be

94 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

shamed before yourselves ; some of you need the
fire.

But one who reads may call out, in the agony
and thirst of a child waking from a dream of end-
less seeking and no finding, ' I am bound like
Lazarus in his grave-clothes ! what am I to
do?' Here is the- answer, drawn from this parable
of our Lord ; for the saying is much like a parable,
teaching more than it utters, appealing to the con-
science and heart, not to the understanding : You
are a slave ; the slave has no hold on the house ;
only the sons and daughters have an abiding rest
in the home of their father. God cannot have
slaves about him always. You must give up your
slavery, and be set free from it. That is what I
am here for. If I make you free, you shall be free
indeed ; for I can make you free only by making
you what you were meant to be, sons like myself
That is how alone the Son can work. But it is
you who must become sons ; you must will it, and
I am here to help you.' It is as if he said, ' You
shall have the freedom of my father's universe ;
for, free from yourselves, you will be free of his
heart. Yourselves are your slavery. That is the
darkness which you have loved rather than the

Freedom 95

light. You have given honour to yourselves, and
not to the Father ; you have sought honour from
men, and not from the Father ! Therefore, even
in the house of your father, you have been but
sojourning slaves. We in his family are all one ;
we have no party-spirit ; we have no self-seeking :
fall in with us, and you shall be free as we are
free.'

If then the poor starved child cry — ' How,
Lord ? ' the answer will depend on what he means
by that Jioiv. If he means, ' What plan wilt thou
adopt ? What is thy scheme for cutting my
bonds and setting me free ? ' the answer may be a
deepening of the darkness, a tightening of the
bonds. But if he means, ' Lord, what wouldst
thou have me to do?' the answer will not tarry.
' Give yourself to me to do what I tell you, to
understand what I say, to be my good, obedient
little brother, and I will wake in you the heart
that my father put in you, the same kind of heart
that I have, and it will grow to love the Father,
altogether and absolutely, as mine does, till you
are ready to be torn to pieces for him. Then you
will know that you are at the heart of the universe,
at the heart of every secret — at the heart of the

96 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

Father. Not till then will you be free, then free
indeed ! '

Christ died to save us, not from suffering, but
from ourselves ; not from injustice, far less from
justice, but from being unjust. He died that we
might live — but live as he lives, by dying as he
died who died to himself that he might live unto
God. If we do not die to ourselves, we cannot
live to God, and he that does not live to God, is
dead. ' Ye shall know the truth,' the Lord says,
'and the truth shall make you free. I am the
truth, and you shall be free as I am free. To be
free, you must be sons like me. To be free you
must be that which you have to be, that which you
are created. To be free you must give the answer
of sons to the Father who calls you. To be free
you must fear nothing but evil, care for nothing
but the will of the Father, hold to him in absolute
confidence and infinite expectation. He alone is
to be trusted.' He has shown us the Father not
only by doing what the Father does, not only by
loving his Father's children even as the Father
loves them, but by his perfect satisfaction with
him, his joy in him, his utter obedience to him.
He has shown us the Father by the absolute de-

Freedom 97

votion of a perfect son. He is the Son of God
because the Father and he are one, have one
thought, one mind, one heart. Upon this truth
— I do not mean the dogma, but the truth itself of
Jesus to his father — hangs the universe ; and upon
the recognition of this truth— that is, upon their
becoming thus true — hangs the freedom of the chil-
dren, the redemption of their whole world. ' I and
the Father are one,' is the centre-truth of the uni-
verse ; and the circumfering truth is, ' that they also
may be one in us.'

The only free man, then, is he who is a child
of the Father. He is a servant of all, but can be
made the slave of none : he is a son of the lord of
the universe. He is in himself, in virtue of his
truth, free. He is in himself a king. For the Son
rests his claim to royalty on this, that lie was born
and came into the world to bear witness to the truth.

III.

98 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

KINGSHIP,

Art thou a king then ? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am
a king ! To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the
world, that I should bear witness unto the truth : every one that is
of the truth heareth my \o\cq.— John xviii. 37,

Pilate asks Jesus if he is a king. The question
is called forth by what the Lord had just said con-
cerning his kingdom, closing with the statement
that it was not of this world. He now answers
Pilate that he is a king indeed, but shows him that
his kingdom is of a very different kind from what is
called kingdom in this world. The rank and rule
of this world are uninteresting to him. He might
have had them. Calling his disciples to follow him,
and his twelve legions of angels to help them, he
might soon have driven the Romans into the abyss,
piling them on the heap of nations they had tumbled
there before. What easier for him than thus to
have cleared the way, and over the tributary world
reigned the just monarch that was the dream of

Kingship 99

the Jews, never seen in Israel or elsewhere, but
haunting the hopes and longings of the poor and
their helpers ! He might from Jerusalem have
ruled the world, not merely dispensing what men
call justice, but compelling atonement. He did
not care for government. No such kingdom would
serve the ends of his father in heaven, or comfort
his own soul. What was perfect empire to the
Son of God, while he might teach one human being
to love his neighbour, and be good like his father !
To be love-helper to one heart, for its joy, and the
glory of his father, was the beginning of true king-
ship ! The Lord would rather wash the feet of his
weary brothers, than be the one only perfect
monarch that ever ruled in the world. It was
empire he rejected when he ordered Satan behind
him like a dog to his heel. Government, I repeat,
was to him flat, stale, unprofitable.

What then is the kingdom over which the Lord
cares to reign, for he says he came into the world
to be a king ? I answer, A kingdom of kings,
and no other. Where every man is a king, there
and there only does the Lord care to reign, in the
name of his father. As no king in Europe would
care to reign over a cannibal, a savage, or an animal

H 2

lOO Unspoken Sernnons : TJiird Series

race, so the Lord cares for no kingdom over any-
thing this world calls a nation. A king must rule
over his own kind. Jesus is a king in virtue of no
conquest, inheritance, or election, but in right of
essential being ; and he cares for no subjects but
such as are his subjects in the same right. His
subjects must be of his own kind, in their very
nature and essence kings. To understand his
answer to Pilate, see wherein consists his kingship ;
what it is that makes him a king ; what manifesta-
tion of his essential being gives him a claim to be
king. The Lord's is a kingdom in which no man
seeks to be above another : ambition is of the dirt
of this world's kingdoms. He says, ' I am a king,
for I was born for the purpose, I came into the
world with the object of bearing witness to the
truth. Everyone that is of my kind, that is of
the truth, hears my voice. He is a king like me,
and makes one of my subjects.' Pilate there-
upon— as would most Christians nowadays, instead
of setting about being true — requests a definition
of truth, a presentation to his intellect in set terms
of what the word ' truth ' means ; but instantly,
whether confident of the uselessness of the inquiry,
or intending to resume it when he has set the Lord

Kingship lOi

at liberty, goes out to the people to tell them he
finds no fault in him. Whatever interpretation we
put on his action here, he must be far less worthy
of blame than those ' Christians ' who, instead of set-
ting themselves to be pure ' even as he is pure,' to
be their brother and sister's keeper, and to serve God
by being honourable in shop and counting-house
and labour-market, proceed to ' serve ' him, some
by going to church or chapel, some by condemning
the opinions of their neighbours, some by teaching
others what they do not themselves heed. Neither
Pilate nor they ask the one true question, ' How
am I to be a true man ? How am I to become a
man worth being a man ? ' The Lord is a king
because his life, the life of his thoughts, of his
imagination, of his will, of every smallest action, is
true — true first to God in that he is altogether his,
true to himself in that he forgets himself altogether,
and true to his fellows in that he will endure
anything they do to him, nor cease declaring him-
self the son and messenger and likeness of God.
They will kill him, but it matters not : the truth
is as he says !

Jesus is a king because his business is to bear
witness to the truth. What truth ? All truth ; all

I02 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

verity of relation throughout the universe — first of
all, that his father is good, perfectly good ; and that
the crown and joy of life is to desire and do the
will of the eternal source of will, and of all life.
He deals thus the death-blow to the power of hell.
For the one principle of hell is — ' I am my own.
I am my own king and my own subject, /am the
centre from which go out my thoughts ; / am the
object and end of my thoughts ; back upon me
as the alpha and omega of life, my thoughts return.
My own glory is, and ought to be, my chief care ;
my ambition, to gather the regards of men to the
one centre, myself My pleasure is my pleasure.
My kingdom is — as many as I can bring to acknow-
ledge my greatness over them. My judgment is
the faultless rule of things. My right is — what
I desire. The more I am all in all to myself,
the greater I am. The less I acknowledge debt or
obligation to another ; the more I close my eyes to
the fact that I did not make myself; the more
self-sufficing I feel or imagine myself — the greater I
am. I will be free with the freedom that consists
in doing whatever I am inclined to do, from whatever
quarter may come the inclination. To do my own
will so long as I feel anything to be my will, is to be

Kingship 103

free, is to live ' To all these principles of hell, or of
this world — they are the same thing, and it matters
nothing whether they are asserted or defended so long
as they are acted upon — the Lord, the king, gives the
direct lie. It is as if he said : — ' I ought to know
what I say, for I have been from all eternity the son
of him from whom you issue, and whom you call your
father, but whom you will not have your father :
I know all he thinks and is ; and I say this, that
my perfect freedom, my pure individuality, rests on
the fact that I have not another will than his.
My will is all for his will, for his will is right.
He is righteousness itself His very being is love
and equity and self-devotion, and he will have his
children such as himself — creatures of love, of fair-
ness, of self-devotion to him and their fellows. I
was born to bear witness to the truth — in my own
person to be the truth visible — the very likeness
and manifestation of the God who is true. My
very being is his witness. Every fact of me wit-
nesses him. He is the truth, and I am the truth.
Kill me, but while I live I say. Such as I am he is.
If I said I did not know him, I should be a liar.
I fear nothing you can do to me. Shall the king
who comes to say what is true, turn his back

1 04 Unspoken Semnons : Third Series

for fear of men ? My Father is like me ; I know
it, and I say it. You do not like to hear it
because you are not like him. I am low in your
eyes which measure things by their show ; there-
fore you say I blaspheme. I should blaspheme
if I said he was such as anything you are capable
of imagining him, for you love show, and power,
and the praise of men. I do not, and God is like
me. I came into the world to show him. I am
a king because he sent me to bear witness to his
truth, and I bear it. Kill me, and I will rise again.
You can kill me, but you cannot hold me dead.
Death is my servant ; you are the slaves of Death
because you will not be true, and let the truth make
you free. Bound, and in your hands, I am free as
God, for God is my father. I know I shall suffer,
suffer unto death, but if you knew my father, you
would not wonder that I am ready ; you would be
ready too. He is my strength. My father is
greater than I.'

Remember, friends, I said, ' It is as if he said.'
I am daring to present a shadow of the Lord's
witnessing, a shadow surely cast by his deeds and
his very words! If I mistake, he will forgive me.
I do not fear him ; I fear only lest, able to see and

Kingship 105

write these things, I should fail of witnessing, and
myself be, after all, a castaway — no king, but a
talker ; no disciple of Jesus, ready to go with him
to the death, but an arguer about the truth ; a
hater of the lies men speak for God, and my-
self a truth-speaking liar, not a doer of the
word.

We see, then, that the Lord bore his witness to
the Truth, to the one God, by standing just what
he was, before the eyes and the lies of men. The
true king is the man who stands up a true man and
speaks the truth, and will die but not lie. The
robes of such a king may be rags or purple ; it
matters neither way. The rags are the more likely,
but neither better nor worse than the robes. Then
was the Lord dressed most royally when his robes
were a jest, a mockery, a laughter. Of the men
who before Christ bare witness to the truth, some
were sawn asunder, some subdued kingdoms ; it
mattered nothing which : they witnessed.

The truth is God\ the witness to the truth is
Jesus. The kingdom of the truth is the hearts of
men. The bliss of men is the true God. The
thought of God is the truth of everything. All
well-being lies in true relation to God. The man

io6 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

who responds to this with his whole being, is of the
truth. The man who knows these things, and but
knows them ; the man who sees them to be true,
and does not order Hfe and action, judgment and
love by them, is of the worst of lying ; with hand,
and foot, and face he casts scorn upon that which
his tongue confesses.

Little thought the sons of Zebedee and their
ambitious mother what the earthly throne of Christ's
glory was which they and she begged they might
share. For the king crowned by his witnessing,
witnessed then to the height of his uttermost
argument, when he hung upon the cross — like a
sin, as Paul in his boldness expresses it. When his
witness is treated as a lie, then most he witnesses, for
he gives it still. High and lifted up on the throne
of his witness, on the cross of his torture, he holds
to it : 'I and the Father are one.' Every mockery
borne in witnessing, is a witnessing afresh. In-
finitely more than had he sat on the throne of
the whole earth, did Jesus witness to the truth when
Pilate brought him out for the last time, and. perhaps
made him sit on the judgment-seat in his mockery
of kingly garments and royal insignia, saying,
* Behold your king ! ' Just because of those robes

Kingship 107

and that crown, that sceptre and that throne of
ridicule, he was the only real king that ever sat on
any throne.

Is every Christian expected to bear witness ?
A man content to bear no witness to the truth is
not in the kingdom of heaven. One who believes
must bear witness. One who sees the truth, must
live witnessing to it. Is our life, then, a witnessing
to the truth ? Do we carry ourselves in bank, on
farm, in house or shop, in study or chamber or
workshop, as the Lord would, or as the Lord would
not? Are we careful to be true? Do we en-
deavour to live to the height of our ideas ? Or
are we mean, self-serving, world-flattering, fawning
slaves ? When contempt is cast on the truth, do we
smile ? Wronged in our presence, do we make no
sign that we hold by it ? I do not say we are called
upon to dispute, and defend with logic and argu-
ment, but we are called upon to show that we are
on the other side. But when I say truth, I do not
mean opinion : to treat opinion as if that were
truth, is grievously to wrong the truth. The soul
that loves the truth and tries to be true, will know
when to speak and when to be silent ; but the true
man will never look as if he did not care. We are

io8 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

not bound to say all we think, but we are bound
not even to look what we do not think. The girl
who said before a company of mocking companions,
' I believe in Jesus,' bore true witness to her Master,
the Truth. David bore witness to God, the Truth,
when he said, ' Unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy,
for thou rendefest to every man according to his
work.'

I09

JUSTICE.

Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy ; for thou renderest
to every man according to his work, — Psalm Ixii. 12.

Some of the translators make it kindness and
goodness \ but I presume there is no real difference
among them as to the character of the word which
here, in the English Bible, is translated mercy.

The religious mind, however, educated upon the
theories yet prevailing in the so-called religious
world, must here recognize a departure from the
presentation to which they have been accustomed :
to make the' psalm speak according to prevalent
theoretic modes, the verse would have to be changed
thus: — ' To thee, O Lord, belongeth yV^^/zV^, for thou
renderest to every man according to his work.'

Let the reason of my choosing this passage, so
remarkable in itself, for a motto to the sermon
which follows, remain for the present doubtful. I
need hardly say that I mean to found no logical
argument upon it.

no Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

Let us endeavour to see plainly what we
mean when we use the word justice, and whether
we mean what we ought to mean when we use
it — especially with reference to God. Let us
come nearer to knowing what we ought to under-
stand by justice, that is, the justice of God ; for
his justice is the live, active justice, giving exist-
ence to the idea of justice in our minds and
hearts. Because he is just, we are capable of
knowing justice ; it is because he is just, that we
have the idea of justice so deeply imbedded in us.

What do we ofteriest mean by jtistice ? Is it
not the carrying out of the law, the infliction of
penalty assigned to offence ? By a just judge we
mean a man who administers the law without
prejudice, without favour or dislike ; and where
guilt is manifest, punishes as much as, and no
more than, the law has in the case laid down. It
may not be that justice has therefore been done.
The law itself may be unjust, and the judge may
mistake ; or, which is more likely, the working of
the law may be foiled by the parasites of law for
their own gain. But even if the law be good, and
thoroughly administered, it docs not necessarily
follow that justice is done.

Justice III

Suppose my watch has been taken from my
pocket ; I lay hold of the thief; he is dragged before
the magistrate, proved guilty, and sentenced to a
just imprisonment : must I walk home satisfied
with the result ? Have I had justice done me ?
The thief may have had justice done him— but
where is my watch ? That is gone, and I remain
a man wronged. Who has done me the wrong?
The thief Who can set right the wrong? The
thief, and only the thief; nobody but the man that
did the wrong. God may be able to move the
man to right the wrong, but God himself cannot
right it without the man. Suppose my watch
found and restored, is the account settled between
me and the thief? I may forgive him, but is the
wrong removed ? By no means. But suppose
the thief to bethink himself, to repent. He has, we
shall say, put it out of his power to return the watch,
but he comes to me and says he is sorry he stole
it, and begs me to accept for the present what little
he is able to bring, as a beginning of atonement :
how should I then regard the matter ? Should I not
feel that he had gone far to make atonement — done
more to make up for the injury he had inflicted
upon me, than the mere restoration of the watch,

112 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

even by himself, could reach to ? Would there not
He, in the thief's confession and submission and
initial restoration, an appeal to the divinest in me —
to the eternal brotherhood ? Would it not indeed
amount to a sufficing atonement as between man
and man? If he offered to bear what I chose to
lay upon him, should I feel it necessary, for the
sake of justice, to inflict some certain suffering as
demanded by righteousness ? I should still have
a claim upon him for my watch, but should I not
be apt to forget it ? He who commits the offence
can make up for it — and he alone.

One thing must surely be plain — that the punish-
ment of the wrong-doer makes no atonement for the
wrong done. How could it make up to me for the
stealing of my watch that the man was punished ?
The wrong would be there all the same. I am not
saying the man ought not to be punished— far from
it ; I am only saying that the punishment nowise
makes up to the man wronged. Suppose the man,
with the watch in his pocket, were to inflict the
severest flagellation on himself: would that lessen
my sense of injury ? Would it set anything right ?
Would it anyway atone ? Would it give him a
right to the watch ? Punishment may do good to

Justice 1 1 3

the man who does the wrong, but that is a thing as
different as important.

Another thing plain is, that, even without the
material rectification of the wrong where that is
impossible, repentance removes the offence which
no suffering could. I at least should feel that
I had no more quarrel with the man. I should
even feel that the gift he had made me, giving into
my heart a repentant brother, was infinitely beyond
the restitution of what he had taken from me.
True, he owed me both himself and the watch, but
such a greater does more than include such a less.
If it be objected, ' You may forgive, but the man
has sinned against God ! ' — Then it is not a part
of the divine to be merciful, I return, and a man ^
may be more merciful than his maker ! A man
may do that which would be too merciful in , ^f^^c^.^^cL
God ! Then mercy is not a divine attribute, for it <
may exceed and be too much ; it must not be in-
finite, therefore cannot be God's own.

' Mercy may be against justice.' Never — if you
mean by justice what I mean by justice. If any-
thing be against justice, it cannot be called mercy,
for it is cruelty. ' To thee^ O Lord, belongeth mercy,
for thou renderest to every man according to his work.'
III. I

1 1 4 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

There is no opposition, 710 strife whatever, between
mercy and justice. Those who say justice means
the punishing of sin, and mercy the not punishing
of sin, and attribute both to God, would make a
schism in the very idea of God. And this brings
me to the question, What is meant by divine
justice?

Human justice may be a poor distortion of
justice, a mere shadow of it ; but the justice of
God must be perfect. We cannot frustrate it in
its working ; are we just to it in our idea of it ? If
you ask any ordinary Sunday congregation in Eng-
land, what is meant by the justice of God, would not
nineteen out of twenty answer, that it means his
punishing of sin ? Think for a moment what de-
gree of justice it would indicate in a man^hat
he punished every wrong. A Roman emperor, a
Turkish cadi, might do that, and be the most unjust
both of men and judges. Ahab might be just on
the throne of punishment, and in his garden the
murderer of Naboth. In God shall we imagine a
distinction of office and character ? God is one ;
and the depth of foolishness is reached by that theo-
logy which talks of God as if he held different offices,
and differed in each. It sets a contradiction in the

Justice 115

very nature of God himself. It represents him, for
instance, as having to do that as a magistrate which
as a father he would not do ! The love of the
father makes him desire to be unjust as a magis-
trate ! Oh the folly of any mind that would ex-
plain God before obeying him ! that would map out
the character of God, instead of crying, Lord, what
wouldst thou have me to do ? God is no magistrate ;
but, if he were, it would be a position to which
his fatherhood alone gave him the right ; his rights
as a father cover every right he can be analytically
supposed to possess. The justice of God is this,
that — to use a boyish phrase, the best the language
will now afford me because of misuse — he gives
every man, woman, child, and beast, everything that
has being, y^2:2>//«j/ ; he renders to every man accord-
ing to his work ; and therein lies his perfect mercy ;
for nothing else could be merciful to the man, and
nothing but mercy could be fair to him. God does
nothing of which any just man, the thing set fairly
and fully before him so that he understood, would
not say, ' That is fair.' Who would, I repeat, say a
man was a just man because he insisted on prose-
cuting every offender .? A scoundrel might do that.
Yet the justice of God, forsooth, is his punishment of

1 1 6 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

sin ! A just man is one who cares, and tries, and
always tries, to give fair play to everyone in every-
thing. When we speak of the justice of God, let
us see that we do mean justice ! Punishment of
the guilty may be involved in justice, but it does not
constitute the justice of God one atom more than
it would constitute the justice of a man.

' But no one ever doubts that God gives fair
play ! '

' That may be — but does not go for much, if
you say that God does this or that which is not
fair.'

' If he does it, you may be sure it is fair.'

' Doubtless, or he could not be God — except to
devils. But you say he does so and so, and is just ;
I say, he does not do so and so, and is just. You
say he does, for the Bible says so. I say, if the
Bible said so, the Bible would lie ; but the Bible
does not say so. The lord of life complains of men
for not judging right. To say on the authority of
the Bible that God does a thing no honourable man
would do, is to lie against God ; to say that it is
therefore right, is to lie against the very spirit of
God. To uphold a lie for God's sake is to be
against God, not for him. God cannot be lied for.

Justice 1 1 7

He is the truth. The truth alone is on his side.
While his child could not see the rectitude of a
thing, he would infinitely rather, even if the thing
were right, have him say, God could not do that
thing, than have him believe that he did it. If
the man were sure God did it, the thing he ought
to say would be, ' Then there must be something
about it I do not know, which if I did know, I
should see the thing quite differently.' But where
an evil thing is invented to explain and account
for a good thing, and a lover of God is called
upon to believe the invention or be cast out,
he needs not mind being cast out, for it is into the
company of Jesus. Where there is no ground to
believe that God does a thing except that men who
would explain God have believed and taught it, he
is not a true man who accepts men against his own
conscience of God. I acknowledge no authority
calling upon me to believe a thing of God, which I
could not be a man and believe right in my fellow-
man. I will accept no explanation of any way
of God which explanation involves what I should
scorn as false and unfair in a man. If you say,
That may be right of God to do which it would not
be right of man to do, I answer. Yes, because

1 1 8 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

the relation of the maker to his creatures is very
different from the relation of one of those creatures
to another, and he has therefore duties toward
his creatures requiring of him what no man would
have the right to do to his fellow-man ; but he can
have no duty that is not both just and merciful.
More is required of the maker, by his own act of
creation, than can be required of men. More and
higher justice and righteousness is required of him
by himself, the Truth ; — greater nobleness, more
penetrating sympathy ; and notJiing but what, if an
honest man understood it, he would say was right.
If it be a thing man cannot understand, then
man can say nothing as to whether it is right
or wrong. He cannot even know that God does
it, when the it is unintelligible to him. What
he calls it may be but the smallest facet of a
composite action. His part is silence. If it be
said by any that God does a thing, and the thing
seems to me unjust, then either I do not know
what the thing is, or God does not do it. The
saying cannot mean what it seems to mean, or the
saying is not true. If, for instance, it be said that
God visits the sins of the fathers on the children, a
man who takes visits lipon to mean punishes, and the

Justice 1 1 9

children to mean tJic innocent children, ought to say,
' Either I do not understand the statement, or the
thing is not true, whoever says it.' God may do
what seems to a man not right, but it must so seem
to him because God works on higher, on divine, on
perfect principles, too right for a selfish, unfair, or
unloving man to understand. But least of all must
we accept some low notion of justice in a man, and
argue that God is just in doing after that notion.

The common idea, then, is, that the justice of
God consists in punishing sin : it is in the hope
of giving a larger idea of the justice of God in
punishing sin that I ask, ' Why is God bound to
punish sin ? '

' How could he be a just God and not punish
sin ? '

' Mercy is a good and right thing,' I answer,
'and but for sin there could be no mercy. We
are enjoined to forgive, to be merciful, to be as our
father in heaven. Two rights cannot possibly be
opposed to each other. If God punish sin, it
must be merciful to punish sin ; and if God for-
give sin, it must be just to forgive sin. We are
required to forgive, with the argument that our
father forgives. It must, I sa}', be right to for-

1 20 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

give. Every attribute of God must be infinite as
himself. He cannot be sometimes merciful, and
not always merciful. He cannot be just, and not
always just. Mercy belongs to him, and needs no
contrivance of theologic chicanery to justify it.'

' Then you mean that it is wrong to punish sin,
therefore God does not punish sin ? '

' By no means ; God does punish sin, but there
is no opposition between punishment and forgive-
ness. The one may be essential to the possibility of
the other. WJiy, I repeat, does God punish sin ?
That is my point.'

* Because in itself sin deserves punishment'

' Then how can he tell us to forgive it ? '

' He punishes, and having punished he for-
gives ? '

'That will hardly do. If sin demands punish-
ment, and the righteous punishment is given, then
the man is free. Why should he be forgiven ? '

'He needs forgiveness because no amount of
punishment will meet his deserts.'

I avoid for the present, as anyone may per-
ceive, the probable expansion of this reply.

' Then why not forgive him at once if the
punishment is not essential — if part can be preter-

Jtistice 1 2 1

mitted ? And again, can that be required which,
according to your showing, is not adequate ? You
will perhaps answer, ' God may please to take
what little he can have ; ' and this brings me to the
fault in the whole idea.

Punishment is noivise an offset to sin. Foolish
people sometimes, in a tone of self-gratulatory pity,
will say, ' If I have sinned I have suffered.' Yes,
verily, but what of that ? What merit is there in
it ? Even had you laid the suffering upon your-
self, what did that do to make up for the wrong ?
That you may have bettered by your suffering is
well for you, but what atonement is there in the
suffering? The notion is a false one altogether.
Punishment, deserved suffering, is no equipoise to
sin. It is no use laying it in the other scale. It
will not move it a hair's breadth. Suffering weighs
nothing at all against sin. It is not of the same
kind, not under the same laws, any more than
mind and matter. We say a man deserves punish-
ment ; but when we forgive and do not punish
him, we do not akvays feel that we have done
wrong ; neither when we do punish him do we fee
that any amends has been made for his wrong-
doing. If it were an offset to wrong, then God

122 Unspoken Ser7}iofis : Third Series

would be bound to punish for the sake of the punish-
ment ; but he cannot be, for he forgives. Then it
is not for the sake of the punishment, as a thing
that in itself ought to be done, but for the sake of
something else, as a means to an end, that God
punishes. It is not directly for justice, else how could
he show mercy, for that would involve injustice ?

Primarily, God is not bound to pimish sin ; he
is bound to destroy sin. If he were not the Maker,
he might not be bound to destroy sin — I do not
know ; but seeing he has created creatures who
have sinned, and therefore sin has, by the creating
act of God, come into the world, God is, in his
own righteousness, bound to destroy sin.

' But that is to have no mercy.'

You mistake. God does destroy sin ; he is
always destroying sin. In him I trust that he is
destroying sin in me. He is always saving the
sinner from his sins, and that is destroying sin.
But vengeance on the sinner, the law of a tooth for a
tooth, is not in the heart of God, neither in his
hand. If the sinner and the sin in him, are the
concrete object of the divine wrath, then indeed
there can be no mercy. Then indeed there will be
an end put to sin by the destruction of the sin and

Justice 123

the sinner together. But thus would no atonement
be wrought — nothing be done to make up for the
wrong God has allowed to come into being by
creating man. There must be an atonement, a
making-up, a bringing together — an atonement
which, I say, cannot be made except by the man
who has sinned.

Punishment, I repeat, is not the thing required
of God, but the absolute destruction of sin. What
better is the world, what better is the sinner, what
better is God, what better is the truth, that the
sinner should suffer — continue suffering to all
eternity? Would there be less sin in the uni-
verse ? Would there be any making-up for sin ?
Would it show God justified in doing what he
knew would bring sin into the world, justified in
making creatures who he knew would sin ? What
setting-right would come of the sinner's suffering ?
If justice demand it, if suffering be the equivalent
for sin, then the sinner must suffer, then God is
bound to exact his suffering, and not pardon ; and
so the making of man was a tyrannical deed, a
creative cruelty. But grant that the sinner has de-
served to suffer, no amount of suffering is any atone-
ment for his sin. To suffer to all eternity could not

124 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

make up for one unjust word. Does that mean, then,
that for an unjust word I deserve to suffer to all
eternity? The unjust word is an eternally evil
thing ; nothing but God in my heart can cleanse
me from the evil that uttered it ; but does it follow
that I saw the evil of what I did so perfectly, that
eternal punishment for it would be just ? Sorrow
and confession and self-abasing love will make up
for the evil word ; suffering will not. For evil in the
abstract, nothing can be done. It is eternally evil.
But I may be saved from it by learning to loathe
it, to hate it, to shrink from it with an eternal
avoidance. The only vengeance worth having on
sin is to make the sinner himself its executioner.
Sin and punishment are in no antagonism to each
other in man, any more than pardon and punish-
ment are in God ; they can perfectly co-exist. The
one naturally follows the other, punishment being
born of sin, because evil exists only by the life of
good, and has no life of its own, being in itself
death. Sin and suffering are not natural opposites ;
the opposite of evil is good, not suffering ; the oppo-
site of sin is not suffering, but righteousness. The
path across the gulf that divides right from wrong
is not the fire, but repentance. If my friend has

fustice 125

wronged me, will it console me to see him punished ?
Will that be a rendering to me of my due ? Will his
agony be a balm to my deep wound ? Should I
be fit for any friendship if that were possible even
in regard to my enemy ? But would not the
shadow of repentant grief, the light of reviving
love on his countenance, heal it at once however
deep? Take any of those wicked people in
Dante's hell, and ask wherein is justice served by
their punishment. Mind, I am not saying it
is not right to punish them ; I am saying that
justice is not, never can be, satisfied by suffer-
ing— nay, cannot have any satisfaction in or from
suffering. Human resentment, human revenge,
human hate may. Such justice as Dante's keeps
wickedness alive in its most terrible forms. The
life of God goes forth to inform, or at least give a
home to victorious evil. Is he not defeated ever}-
time that one of those lost souls defies him ?
All hell cannot make Vanni Fucci say ' I was
wrong.' God is triumphantly defeated, I say,
throughout the hell of his vengeance. Although
against evil, it is but the vain and wasted cruelty
of a tyrant. There is no destruction of evil there-
by, but an enhancing of its horrible power in the

126 Ufispoken Sej'mons : Third SeiHes

a divine imagination can invent. If sin must be
kept alive, then hell must be kept alive ; but while
I regard the smallest sin as infinitely loathsome,
I do not believe that any being, never good
enough to see the essential ugliness of sin, could
sin so as to deserve such punishment. I am not
now, however, dealing with the question of the
duration of punishment, but with the idea of
punishment itself; and would only say in passing,
that the notion that a creature born imperfect, nay,
born with impulses to evil not of his own generating,
and which he could not help having, a creature
to whom the true face of God was never presented,
and by whom it never could have been seen, should
be thus condemned, is as loathsome a lie against
God as could find place in heart too undeveloped
to understand what justice is, and too low to look
up into the face of Jesus. It never in truth found
place in any heart, though in many a pettifogging
brain. There is but one thing lower than delibe-
rately to believe such a lie, and that is to worship
the God of whom it is believed. The one deepest,
highest, truest, fittest, most wholesome suffering
must be generated in the wicked by a vision, a true

Justice 1 2 7

sight, more or less adequate, of the hideousness of
their Hves, of the horror of the wrongs they have
done. Physical suffering may be a factor in
rousing this mental pain ; but ' I would I had
never been born ! ' must be the cry of Judas, not
because of the hell-fire around him, but because
he loathes .the man that betrayed his friend, the
world's friend. When a man loathes himself, he
has begun to be saved. Punishment tends to this
result. Not for its own sake, not as a make-up for
sin, not for divine revenge — horrible word, not for
any satisfaction to justice, can punishment exist.
Punishment is for the sake of amendment and
atonement. God is bound by his love to punish
sin in order to deliver his creature ; he is bound by
his justice to destroy sin in his creation. Love is
justice — is the fulfilling of the law, for God as well
as for his children. This is the reason of punish-
ment ; this is why justice requires that the wicked
shall not go unpunished— that they, through the
eye-opening power of pain, may come to see and do
justice, may be brought to desire and make all
possible amends, and so become just. Such punish-
ment concerns justice in the deepest degree. For
Justice, that is God, is bound in himself to see

128 Unspoken Sermons : Third Se7^ies

justice done by his children — not in the mere out-
ward act, but in their very being. He is bound in
himself to make up for wrong done by his children,
and he can do nothing to make up for wrong done
but by bringing about the repentance of the wrong-
doer. When the. man says, ' I did wrong; I hate
myself and my deed ; I cannot endure to think that
I did it ! ' then, I say, is atonement begun. With-
out that, all that the Lord did would be lost. He
would have made no atonement. Repentance, resti-
tution, confession, prayer for forgiveness, righteous
dealing thereafter, is the sole possible, the only
true make-up for sin. For nothing less than
this did Christ die. When a man acknowledges
the right he denied before ; when he says to the
wrong, ' I abjure, I loathe you ; I see now what you
are ; I could not see it before because I would not ;
God forgive me ; make me clean, or let me die ! '
then justice, that is God, has conquered — and not
till then.

' What atonement is there ? '

Every atonement that God cares for ; and the
work of Jesus Christ on earth was the creative
atonement, because it works atonement in every
heart. He brings and is bringing God and man.

Jitstice 129

and man and man, into perfect unity : ' I in them
and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in
one.'

' That is a dangerous doctrine ! '

More dangerous than you think to many things
— to every evil, to every lie, and among the rest to
every false trust in what Christ did, instead of in
Christ himself Paul glories in the cross of Christ,
but he does not trust in the cross : he trusts in the
living Christ and his living father.

Justice then requires that sin should be put an
end to ; and not that only, but that it should be
atoned for ; and where punishment can do anything
to this end, where it can help the sinner to know
what he has been guilty of, where it can soften his
heart to see his pride and wrong and cruelty, justice
requires that punishment shall not be spared. And
the more we believe in God, the surer we shall be
that he will spare nothing that suffering can do to
deliver his child from death. If suffering cannot
serve this end, we need look for no more hell, but
for the destruction of sin by the destruction of the
sinner. That, however, would, it appears to me,
be for God to suffer defeat, blameless indeed, but
defeat.

III. K

1 30 Unspoken Ser7no7is : TJiird Series

If God be defeated, he must destroy — that is,
he must withdraw life. How can he go on send-
ing forth his Hfe into irreclaimable souls, to keep
sin alive in them throughout the ages of eternity ?
But then, I say, no atonement would be made for
the wrongs they have done ; God remains defeated,
for he has created that which sinned, and which
would not repent and make up for its sin. But
those who believe that God will thus be defeated
by many souls, must surely be of those who do not
believe he cares enough to do his very best for
them. He is their Father ; he had power to make
them out of himself, separate from himself, and
capable of being one with him : surely he will
somehow save and keep them ! Not the power of
sin itself can close all the channels between creat-
ing and created.

The notion of suffering as an offset for sin, the
foolish idea that a man by suffering borne may
get out from under the hostile claim to which his
wrong-doing has subjected him, comes first of
all, I think, from the satisfaction we feel when
wrong comes to grief Why do wc feel this satis-
faction ? Because we hate wrong, but, not being
righteous ourselves, more or less hate the wronger

Justice 1 3 1

as well as his wrong, hence are not only righteously
pleased to behold the law's disapproval proclaimed
in his punishment, but unrighteously pleased with
his suffering, because of the impact upon us of
his wrong. In this way the inborn justice of our
nature passes over to evil. It is no pleasure to God,
as it so often is to us, to see the wicked suffer. To
regard any suffering with satisfaction, save it be
sympathetically with its curative quality, comes of
evil, is inhuman because undivine, is a thing God
is incapable of His nature is always to forgive,
and just because he forgives, he punishes. Because
God is so altogether alien to wrong, because it is to
him a heart-pain and trouble that one of his little
ones should do the evil thing, there is, I believe, no
extreme of suffering to which, for the sake of de-
stroying the evil thing in them, he would not sub-
ject them. A man might flatter, or bribe, or coax
a tyrant ; but there is no refuge from, the love of
God ; that love will, for very love, insist upon the
uttermost farthing.

' That is not the sort of love I care about ! '
No ; how should you ? I well believe it ! You
cannot care for it until }-ou begin to know it.
But the eternal love will not be moved to yield

K 2

132 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

you to the selfishness that is killing you. What
lover would yield his lady to her passion for
morphia ? You may sneer at such love, but the
Son of God who took the weight of that love,
and bore it through the world, is content with
it, and so is everyone who knows it. The love of
the Father is a radiant perfection. Love and not
self-love is lord of the universe. Justice demands
your punishment, because justice demands, and will
have, the destruction of sin. Justice demands your
punishment because it demands that your father
should do his best for you. God, being the God
of justice, that is of fair-play, and having made us
what we are, apt to fall and capable of being raised
again, is in himself bound to punish in order to
deliver us — else is his relation to us poor beside
that of an earthly father. ' To thee, O Lord, be-
longeth mercy, for thou renderest to every man
according to his work.' A man's work is his cha-
racter ; and God in his mercy is not indifferent,
but treats him according to his work.

The notion that the salvation of Jesus is a sal-
vation from the consequences of our sins, is a false,
mean, low notion. The salvation of Christ is salva-
tion from the smallest tendenc}- or leaning to sin.

JzLstice 133

It is a deliverance into the pure air of God's ways
of thinking and feeling. It is a salvation that makes
the heart pure, with the will and choice of the heart
to be pure. To such a heart, sin is disgusting. It
sees a thing as it is, — that is, as God sees it, for
God sees everything as it is. The soul thus saved
would rather sink into the flames of hell than steal
into heaven and skulk there under the shadow of
an imputed righteousness. No soul is saved that
would not prefer hell to sin. Jesus did not die to
save us from punishment ; he was called Jesus be-
cause he should save his people from their sins.

If punishment be no atonement, how does the
fact bear on the popular theology accepted by
every one of the opposers of what they call Christ-
ianity, as representing its doctrines ? Most of us
have been more or less trained in it, and not a few
of us have thereby, thank God, learned what it is
— an evil thing, to be cast out of intellect and
heart. Many imagine it dead and gone, but in
reality it lies at the root (the intellectual root only,
thank God) of much the greater part of the teach-
ing of Christianity in the country ; and is believed
in — so far as the false can be believed in — by many
who think they have left it behind, when they have

134 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

merely omitted the truest, most offensive modes
of expressing its doctrines. It is humiliating to
find how many comparatively honest people think
they get rid of a falsehood by softening the
statement of it, by giving it the shape and placing
it in the light in which it will least assert itself,
and so have a good chance of passing both with
such as hold it thoroughly, and such as might revolt
against it more plainly uttered.

Once for all I will ease my soul regarding the
horrid phantasm. I have passed through no
change of opinion concerning it since first I began
to write or speak ; but I have written little and
spoken less about it, because I would preach no
mere negation. My work was not to destroy the
false, except as it came in the way of building the
true. Therefore I sought to speak but what I
believed, saying little concerning what I did not
believe ; trusting, as now I trust, in the true to
cast out the false, and shunning dispute. Neither
will I now enter any theological lists to be the
champion for or against mere doctrine. I have no
desire to change the opinion of man or woman.
Let everyone for me hold what he pleases. But I
would do my utmost to disable such as think

Jttstice .135

correct opinion essential to salvation from laying
any other burden on the shoulders of true men
and women than the yoke of their Master ; and
such burden, if already oppressing any, I would
gladly lift. Let the Lord himself teach them, I
say. A man who has not the mind of Christ — and
no man has the mind of Christ except him who
makes it his business to obey him — cannot have
correct opinions concerning him ; neither, if he
could, would they be of any value to him : he
would be nothing the better, he would be the worse
for having them. Our business is not to think
correctly, but to live truly ; then first will there be
a possibility of our thinking correctly. One chief
cause of the amount of unbelief in the world is,
that those who have seen something of the glory
of Christ, set themselves to theorize concerning
him rather than to obey him. In teaching men,
they have not taught them Christ, but taught
them about Christ. More eager after credible
theory than after doing the truth, they have specu-
lated in a condition of heart in which it was im-
possible they should understand ; they have pre-
sumed to explain a Christ whom years and years
of obedience could alone have made them able to

6 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

comprehend. Their teaching of him, therefore, has
been repugnant to the common sense of many who
had not half their privileges, but in whom, as in
Nathanael, there was no guile. Such, naturally,
press their theories, in general derived from them
of old time, upon others, insisting on their thinking
about Christ as they think, instead of urging them
to go to Christ to be taught by him whatever he
chooses to teach them. They do their unintentional
worst to stop all growth, all life. From such and
their false teaching I would gladly help to deliver
the true-hearted. Let the dead bury their dead,
but I would do what I may to keep them from
burying the living.

If there be no satisfaction to justice in the mere
punishment of the wrong-doer, what shall we say
of the notion of satisfying justice by causing one to
suffer who is not the wrong-doer ? And what,
moreover, shall we say to the notion that, just be-
cause he is not the person who deserves to be
punished, but is absolutely innocent, his suffering
gives perfect satisfaction to the perfect justice?
That the injustice be done with the consent of the
person maltreated makes no difference : it makes
it even worse, seeing, as they say, that justice re-

Justice 137

quires the punishment of the sinner, and here is
one far more than innocent. They have shifted
their ground ; it is no more punishment, but mere
suffering the law requires ! The thing gets worse
and worse. I declare my utter and absolute re-
pudiation of the idea in any form whatever.
Rather than believe in a justice — that is, a God
— to whose righteousness, abstract or concrete, it
could be any satisfaction for the wrong-doing of a
man that a man who did no wrong should suffer,
I would be driven from among men, and dwell
with the wild beasts that have not reason enough
to be unreasonable. What ! God, the father of
Jesus Christ, like that ! His justice contented
with direst injustice ! The anger of him who will
nowise clear the guilty, appeased by the suffering
of the innocent ! Very God forbid ! Observe :
the evil fancy actually substitutes for punishment
not mere suffering, but that suffering which is
farthest from punishment ; and this when, as I
have shown, punishment, the severest, can be no
satisfaction to justice ! How did it come ever to
be imagined ? It sprang from the trustless dread
that cannot believe in the forgiveness of the
Father ; cannot believe that even God will do

8 Unspoke7i Sci'7no7is : Thu^a Series

anything for nothing ; cannot trust him without
a legal arrangement to bind him. How many,
failing to trust God, fall back on a text, as they
call it ! It sprang from the pride that will under-
stand what it cannot, before it will obey what it
sees. He that will understand first will believe
a lie — a lie from which obedience alone will at
length deliver him. If anyone say, ' But I believe
what you despise,' I answer, To believe it is your
punishment for being able to believe it ; you may
call it your reward, if you will. You ought not
to be able to believe it. It is the merest, poorest,
most shameless fiction, invented without the per-
ception that it was an invention — fit to satisfy the
intellect, doubtless, of the inventor, else he could
not have invented it. It has seemed to satisfy
also many a humble soul, content to take what
was given, and not think ; content that another
should think for him, and tell him what was the
mind of his Father in heaven. Again I say, let
the person who can be so satisfied be so satisfied ;
I have not to trouble myself with him. That he
can be content with it, argues him unready to re-
ceive better. So long as he can believe false
things concerning God, he is such as is capable of

Justice 1 39

believing them — with how much or how Httle of
blame, God knows. Opinion, right or wrong, will
do nothing to save him. I would that he thought
no more about this or any other opinion, but set
himself to do the work of the Master. With his
opinions, true or false, I have nothing to do. It
is because such as he force evil things upon
their fellows — utter or imply them from the seat
of authority or influence — to their agony, their
paralysation, their unbelief, their indignation, their
stumbling, that I have any right to speak. I
would save my fellows from having what notion
of God is possible to them blotted out by a lie.

If it be asked how, if it be false, the doctrine
of substitution can have been permitted to remain
so long an article of faith to so many, I answer.
On the same principle on which God took up and
made use of the sacrifices men had, in their lack
of faith, invented as a way of pleasing him. Some
children will tell lies to please the parents that
hate lying. They will even confess to having
done a wrong they have not done, thinking their
parents would like them to say they had done it,
because they teach them to confess. God accepted
men's sacrifices until he could cret them to see —

1 40 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

and with how many has he yet not succeeded, in
the church and out of it ! — that he does not care
for such things.

'But,' again it may well be asked, 'whence then
has sprungthe undeniable potency of that teaching?'

I answer. From its having in it a notion of God
and his Christ, poor indeed and faint, but, by the
very poverty and untruth in its presentation, fitted
to the weakness and unbelief of men, seeing it was
by men invented to meet and ease the demand
made upon their own weakness and unbelief
Thus the leaven spreads. The truth is there. It
is Christ the glory of God. But the ideas that
poor slavish souls breed concerning this glory the
moment the darkness begins to disperse, is quite
another thing. Truth is indeed too good for men
to believe ; they must dilute it before they can
take it ; they must dilute it before they dare give
it. They must make it less true before they can
believe it enough to get an}- good of it. Unable
to believe in the love of the Lord Jesus Christ,
they invented a mediator in his mother, and so
were able to approach a little where else they had
stood away ; unable to believe in the forgivingness
of their father in heaven, they invented a way to

Justice 1 4 1

be forgiven that should not demand of him so
much ; which might make it right for him to for-
give ; which should save them from having to
believe downright in the tenderness of his father-
heart, for that they found impossible. They
thought him bound to punish for the sake of
punishing, as an offset to their sin ; they could not
believe in clear forgiveness ; that did not seem
divine ; it needed itself to be justified ; so they
invented for its justification a horrible injustice,
involving all that was bad in sacrifice, even human
sacrifice. They invented a satisfaction for sin
which was an insult to God. He sought no satis-
faction, but an obedient return to the Father.
What satisfaction was needed he made himself in
what he did to cause them to turn from evil and
go back to him. The thing was too simple for
complicated unbelief and the arguing spirit.
Gladly would I help their followers to loathe such
thoughts of God ; but for that, the}^ themselves
must grow better men and women. While they
are capable of being satisfied with them, there
would be no advantage in their becoming intel-
lectually convinced that such thoughts were wrong.
I would not speak a word to persuade them of it.

142 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

Success would be worthless. They would but re-
main what they were — children capable of thinking
meanly of their father. When the heart recoils,
discovering how horrible it would be to have such
an unreality for God, it will begin to search about
and see whether it must indeed accept such state-
ments concerning God ; it will search after a real
God by whom to hold fast, a real God to deliver
them from the terrible idol. It is for those thus
moved that I write, not at all for the sake of dis-
puting with those who love the lie they may not be
to blame for holding ; who, like the Jews of old,
would cast out of their synagogue the man who
doubts the genuineness of their moral caricature of
God, who doubts their travesty of the grandest truth
in the universe, the atonement of Jesus Christ. Of
such a man they will unhesitatingly report that he
does not believe in the atonement. But a lie for
God is against God, and carries the sentence of
death in itself

Instead of giving their energy to do the will of
God, men of power have given it to the construc-
tion of a system by which to explain why Christ
must die, what were the necessities and designs
of God in permitting his death ; and men of

J tt slice 143

power of our own day, while casting from them not
a httle of the good in the teaching of the Roman
Church, have clung to the morally and spiritually
vulgar idea of justice and satisfaction held by pagan
Rome, buttressed by the Jewish notion of sacrifice,
and in its very home, alas, with the mother of all
the western churches ! Better the reformers had
kept their belief in a purgatory, and parted with
what is called vicarious sacrifice !

Their system is briefly this : God is bound to
punish sin, and to punish it to the uttermost. His
justice requires that sin be punished. But he loves
man, and does not want to punish him if he can
help it. Jesus Christ says, ' I will take his punish-
ment upon me.' God accepts his offer, and lets
man go unpunished — upon a condition. His justice
is more than satisfied by the punishment of an in-
finite being instead of a world of worthless creatures.
The suffering of Jesus is of greater value than that
of all the generations, through endless ages, because
he is infinite, pure, perfect in love and truth, being
God's own everlasting son. God's condition with
man is, that he believe in Christ's atonement thus
explained. A man must say, ' I have sinned, and
deserve to be tortured to all eternity. But Christ

1 44 Unspoken Sermo7is : Third Series

has paid my debts, by being punished instead of
me. Therefore he is my Saviour. I am now bound
by gratitude to him to turn away from evil.' Some
would doubtless insist on his saying a good deal
more, but this is enough for my purpose.

As to the jiistice of God requiring the punish-
ment of the sinner, I have said enough. That the
mere suffering of the sinner can be no satisfaction
to justice, I have also tried to show. If the suffer-
ing of the sinner be indeed required by the justice
of God, let it be administered. But what shall we
say adequate to confront the base representation
that it is not punishment, not the suffering of the
sinner that is required, but suffering ! nay, as if this
were not depth enough of baseness to crown all
heathenish representation of the ways of God, that
the suffering of the innocent is unspeakably prefer-
able in his eyes to that of the wicked, as a make-
up for wrong done ! nay, again, ' in the lowest
deep a lower deep,' that the suffering of the
holy, the suffering of the loving, the suffering
of the eternally and perfectly good, is supremely
satisfactory to the pure justice of the Father
of spirits ! Not all the suffering that could
be heaped upon the wicked could buy them a

Justice 145

moment's respite, so little is their sufifering a
counterpoise to their wrong ; in the working
of this law of equivalents, this lex talionis, the
suffering of millions of years could not equal the
sin of a moment, could not pay off one farthing
of the deep debt. But so much more valuable,
precious, and dear, is the suffering of the innocent,
so much more of a satisfaction — observe — to the
justice of God, that in return for that suffering
another wrong is done : the sinners who deserve
and ought to be punished are set free.

I know the root of all that can be said on the
subject ; the notion is imbedded in the gray matter
of my Scotch brains ; and if I reject it, I know
what I reject. For the love of God my heart rose
early against the low invention. Strange that in a
Christian land it should need to be said, that to
punish the innocent and let the guilty go free is
unjust ! It wrongs the innocent, the guilty, and
God himself It would be the worst of all wrongs
to the guilty to treat them as innocent. The whole
device is a piece of spiritual charlatanry — fit only
for a fraudulent jail-delivery. If the wicked ought
to be punished, it were the worst possible perversion
of justice tc take a righteous being however strong,
III. L

1 46 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

and punish him instead of the sinner however
weak. To the poorest idea of justice in punish-
ment, it is essential that the sinner, and no other
than the sinner, should receive the punishment.
The strong being that was willing to bear such
punishment might well be regarded as worshipful,
but what of the God whose so-called justice he
thus defeats? If you say it is justice, not God
that demands the suffering, I say justice cannot
demand that which is unjust, and the whole thing
is unjust. God is absolutely just, and there is no
deliverance from his justice, which is one with his
mercy. The device is an absurdity— a grotesquely
deformed absurdity. To represent the living God
as a party to such a style of action, is to veil with
a mask of cruelty and hypocrisy the face whose
glory can be seen only in the face of Jesus ; to put
a tirade of vulgar Roman legality into the mouth
of the Lord God merciful and gracious, who will
by no means clear the guilty. Rather than believe
such ugly folly of him whose very name is enough
to make those that know him heave the breath of
the hart panting for the waterbrooks ; rather than
think of him what in a man would make me avoid
him at the risk of my life, I would say, ' There is

Jtistice 147

no God ; let us neither eat nor drink, that we may
die ! For lo, this is not our God ! This is not he
for whom we have waited ! ' But I have seen his
face and heard his voice in the face and the voice
of Jesus Christ ; and I say this is our God, the
very one whose being the Creator makes it an in-
finite gladness to be the created. I will not have
the God of the scribes and the pharisees whether
Jewish or Christian, protestant, Roman, or Greek,
but thy father, O Christ! He is my God. If you
say, ' That is our God, not yours ! ' I answer,
* Your portrait of your God is an evil caricature of
the face of Christ.'

To believe in a vicarious sacrifice, is to think to
take refuge with the Son from the righteousness of
the Father ; to take refuge with his work instead of
with the Son himself ; to take refuge with a theory
of that work instead of the work itself ; to shelter
behind a false quirk of law instead of nestling in
the eternal heart of the unchangeable and righteous
Father, who is merciful in that he renders to every
man according to his work, and compels their
obedience, nor admits judicial quibble or subterfuge.
God will never let a man off with any fault. He
must have him clean. He will excuse him to the

L 2

148 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

very uttermost of truth, but not a hair's-breadth
beyond it ; he is his true father, and will have his
child true as his son Jesus Christ is true. He will
impute to him nothing that he has not, will lose
sight of no smallest good that he has ; will quench
no smoking flax, break no bruised reed, but send
forth judgment unto victory. He is God beyond
all that heart hungriest for love and righteousness
could to eternity desire.

If you say the best of men have held the
opinions I stigmatize, I answer, ' Some of the best
of men have indeed held these theories, and of men
who have held them I have loved and honoured
some heartily and humbly — but because of what
they ivere, not because of what they thotigJit ; and
they were what they were in virtue of their obe-
dient faith, not of their opinion. They were not
better men because of holding these theories. In
virtue of knowing God by obeying his son, they
rose above the theories they had never looked in
the face, and so had never recognized as evil.
Many have arrived, in the natural progress of their
sacred growth, at the point where they must
abandon them. The man of whom I knew the
most good gave them up gladly. Good to wor-

Justice 1 49

shipfulness may be the man that holds them, and
I hate them the more therefor ; they are Hes that,
working under cover of the truth mingled with
them, burrow as near the heart of the good man as
they can go. Whoever, from whatever reason of
blindness, may be the holder of a lie, the thing is a
lie, and no falsehood must mingle with the justice
we mete out to it. There is notliing for any lie but
the pit of hell. Yet until the man sees the thing
to be a lie, how shall he but hold it ! Are there
not mingled with it shadows of the best truth in
the universe ? So long as a man is able to love a
lie, he is incapable of seeing it is a lie. He who is
true, out and out, will know at once an untruth ;
and to that vision we must all come. I do not
write for the sake of those who either make or
heartily accept any lie. When they see the glory
of God, they will see the eternal difference between
the false and the true, and not till then. I write
for those whom such teaching as theirs has folded
in a cloud through which they cannot see the stars
of heaven, so that some of them even doubt if there
be any stars of heaven. For the holy ones who
believed and taught these things in days gone by,
all is well. Many of the holiest of them cast the

1 50 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

lies from them long ere the present teachers of them
were born. Many who would never have invented
them for themselves, yet receiving them with the
seals affixed of so many good men, took them in
their humility as recognized truths, instead of
inventions of men ; and, oppressed by authority,
the authority of men far inferior to themselves, did
not dare dispute them, but proceeded to order their
lives by what truths they found in their company,
and so had their reward, the reward of obedience,
in being by that obedience brought to know God,
which knowledge broke for them the net of a pre-
sumptuous self-styled orthodoxy. Every man who
tries to obey the Master is my brother, whether he
counts me such or not, and I revere him ; but dare
I give quarter to ^vhat I see to be a lie, because my
brother believes it ? The lie is not of God, whoever
may hold it.

' Well, then,' will many say, ' if you thus uncere-
moniously cast to the winds the doctrine of vicarious
sacrifice, what theory do you propose to substitute
in its stead ? '

' In the name of the truth,' I answer, None. I
will send out no theory of mine to rouse afresh
little whirlwinds of dialogistic dust mixed with

Justice 1 5 1

dirt 'and straws and holy words, hiding the Master in
talk about him. If I have any such, I will not cast it
on the road as I walk, but present it on a fair patine
to him to whom I may think it well to show it.
Only eyes opened by the sun of righteousness,
and made single by obedience, can judge even the
poor moony pearl of formulated thought. Say if
you will that I fear to show my opinion. Is the
man a coward who will not fling his child to the
wolves ? What faith in this kind I have, I will
have to myself before God, till I see better reason
for uttering it than I do now.

' Will you then take from me my faith, and
help me to no other ? '

Your faith ! God forbid. Your theory is not
your faith, nor anything like it. Your faith is your
obedience ; your theory I know not what. Yes, I
will gladly leave you without any of what you call
faith. Trust in God. Obey the word — every word
of the Master. That is faith ; and so believing,
your opinion will grow out of your true life, and
be worthy of it. Peter says the Lord gives the
spirit to them that obey him : the spirit of the
Master, and that alone, can guide you to any theory
that it will be of use to you to hold. A theory

152 Unspoken Sermons : Thh^d Series

arrived-at any other way is not worth the time
spent on it. Jesus is the creating and saving
lord of our intellects as well as of our more
precious hearts ; nothing that he does not think, is
worth thinking ; no man can think as he thinks,
except he be pure like him ; no man can be pure
like him, except he go with him, and learn from
him. To put off obeying him till we find a credible
theory concerning him, is to set aside the potion we
know it our duty to drink, for the study of the
various schools of therapy. You know what Christ
requires of you is right — much of it at least you
believe to be right, and your duty to do, whether he
said it or not : do it. If you do not do what you
know of the truth, I do not wonder that you seek it
intellectually, for that kind of search may well be,
as Milton represents it, a solace even to the fallen
angels. But do not call anything that may be so
gained, TJie Truth. How can you, not caring to
be true, judge concerning him whose life was
to do for very love the things you confess your
duty, yet do them not? Obey the truth, I say,
and let theory wait. Theory may spring from life,
but never life from theory.

I will not then tell you what I think, but I will

Justice 153

tell any man who cares to hear it what I believe.
I will do it now. Of course what I say must
partake thus much of the character of theory that
I cannot prove it ; I can only endeavour to order
my life by it.

I believe in Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of
God, my elder brother, my lord and master ; I
believe that he has a right to my absolute obedi-
ence whereinsoever I know or shall come to know
his will ; that to obey him is to ascend the pinnacle
of my being ; that not to obey him would be to
deny him. I believe that he died that I might die
like him — die to any ruling power in me but the
will of God — live ready to be nailed to the cross as
he was, if God will it. I believe that he is my
Saviour from myself, and from 'all that has come
of loving myself, from all that God does not love,
and would not have me love — all that is not worth
loving; that he died that the justice, the mercy of
God, might have its way with me, making me just
as God is just, merciful as he is merciful, perfect as
my father in heaven is perfect. I believe and pray
that he will give me what punishment I need to
set me right, or keep me from going wrong. I
believe that he died to deliver me from all mean-

154 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

ness, all pretence, all falseness, all unfairness, all
poverty of spirit, all cowardice, all fear, all anxiety,
all forms of self-love, all trust or hope in possession ;
to make me merry as a child, the child of our
father in heaven, loving nothing but what is lovely,
desiring nothing I should be ashamed to let the
universe of God see me desire. I believe that God
is just like Jesus, only greater yet, for Jesus said
so. I believe that God is absolutely, grandly
beautiful, even as the highest soul of man counts
beauty, but infinitely beyond that soul's highest
idea — with the beauty that creates beauty, not
merely shows it, or itself exists beautiful. I believe
that God has always done, is always doing his best
for every man ; that no man is miserable because
God is forgetting him ; that he is not a God
to crouch before, but our father, to whom the
child-heart cries exultant, 'Do with me as thou
wilt.'

I believe that there is nothing good for me or
for any man but God, and more and more of God,
and that alone through knowing Christ can we
come nigh to him.

I believe that no man is ever condemned for
any sin except one — that he will not leave his sins

Justice 155

and come out of them, and be the child of him who
is his father.

I beheve that justice and mercy are simply one
and the same thing ; without justice to the full
there can be no mercy, and without mercy to the
full there can be no justice ; that such is the mercy
of God that he will hold his children in the con-
suming fire of his distance until they pay the
uttermost farthing, until they drop the purse of
selfishness with all the dross that is in it, and rush
home to the Father and the Son, and the many
brethren — rush inside the centre of the life-giving
fire whose outer circles burn. I believe that no
hell will be lacking which would help the just
mercy of God to redeem his children.

I believe that to him who obeys, and thus
opens the doors of his heart to receive the eternal
gift, God gives the spirit of his son, the spirit of
himself, to be in him, and lead him to the under-
standing of all truth ; that the true disciple shall
thus always know what he ought to do, though not
necessarily what another ought to do ; that the
spirit of the father and the son enlightens by teach-
ing righteousness. I believe that no teacher should
strive to make men think as he thinks, but to lead

156 Unspoken Serino7is : Third Series

them to the Hving Truth, to the Master himself, of
whom alone they can learn anything, who will
make them in themselves know what is true by the
very seeing of it. I believe that the inspiration of
the Almighty alone gives understanding. I believe
that to be the disciple of Christ is the end of being;
that to persuade men to be his disciples is the end
of teaching.

' The sum of all this is that you do not believe
in the atonement?'

I believe in Jesus Christ. Nowhere am J re-
quested to believe in any thing, or in any statement,
but everywhere to believe in God and in Jesus
Christ. In what you call the atonement, in what
you mean by the word, what I have already written
must make it plain enough 1 do not believe. God
forbid I should, for it would be to believe a lie, and
a lie which is to blame for much non-acceptance of
the gospel in this and other lands. But, as the
word was used by the best English writers at the
time when the translation of the Bible was made —
with all my heart, and soul, and strength, and
mind, I believe in the atonement, call it the
a-t07ie-inent, or the at-one-ment, as }'ou please. I
believe that Jesus Christ is our atonement ; that

Justice 1 5 7

through him we are reconciled to, made one with
God. There is not one word in the New Testa-
ment about reconciling God to us ; it is we that have
to be reconciled to God. I am not writing, neither
desire to write, a treatise on the atonement, my busi-
ness being to persuade men to be atoned to God ;
but I will go so far to meet my questioner as to
say — without the slightest expectation of satisfying
him, or the least care whether I do so or not, for his
opinion is of no value to me, though his truth is of
endless value to me and to the universe — that, even
in the sense of the atonement being a making-up
for the evil done by men toward God, I believe
in the atonement. Did not the Lord cast himself
into the eternal gulf of evil yawning between the
children and the Father ? Did he not bring the
Father to us, let us look on our eternal Sire in the
face of his true son, that we might have that in our
hearts which alone could make us love him — a true
sight of him ? Did he not insist on the one truth
of the universe, the one saving truth, that God was
just what he was ? Did he not hold to that assertion
to the last, in the face of contradiction and death ?
Did he not thus lay down his life persuading us to
lay down ours at the feet of the Father ? Has not

158 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

his very life by which he died passed into those
who have received him, and re-created theirs, so
that now they live with the life which alone is life ?
Did he not foil and slay evil by letting all the waves
and billows of its horrid sea break upon him, go
over him, and die without rebound — spend their
rage, fall defeated, and cease ? Verily, he made
atonement ! We sacrifice to God ! — it is God who
has sacrificed his own son to us ; there was no way
else of getting the gift of himself into our hearts.
Jesus sacrificed himself to his father and the chil-
dren to bring them together — all the love on the
side of the Father and the Son, all the selfishness
on the side of the children. If the joy that alone
makes life worth living, the joy that God is such as
Christ, be a true thing in my heart, how can I but
believe in the atonement of Jesus Christ ? I believe
it heartily, as God means it.

Then again, as the power that brings about a
making-up for any wrong done by man to man, I
believe in the atonement. Who that believes in
Jesus does not long to atone to his brother for the
injury he has done him ? What repentant child,
feeling he has wronged his father, does not desire
to make atonement ? Who is the mover, the

Justice 159

causer, the persuader, the creator of the repentance
of the passion that restores fourfold ? — Jesus, our
propitiation, our atonement. He is the head and
leader, the prince of the atonement. He could not
do it without us, but he leads us up to the Father's
knee: he makes us make atonement. Learning
Christ, we are not only sorry for what we have
done wrong, we not only turn from it and hate it,
but we become able to serve both God and man
with an infinitely high and true service, a soul-
service. We are able to offer our whole being to
God to whom by deepest right it belongs. Have
I injured anyone ? With him to aid my justice,
new risen with him from the dead, shall I not make
good amends ? Have I failed in love to my neigh-
bour? Shall I not now love him with an infinitely
better love than was possible to me before ? That
I will and can make atonement, thanks be to him
who is my atonement, making me at one with God
and my fellows ! He is my life, my joy, my lord,
my owner, the perfecter of my being by the perfec-
tion of his ov^n. I dare not say with Paul that I am
the slave of Christ ; but my highest aspiration and
desire is to be the slave of Christ.

' But you do not believe that the sufferings of

i6o Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

Christ, as sufferings, justified the supreme ruler in
doing anything which he would not have been at
liberty to do but for those sufferings ? '

I do not. I believe the notion as unworthy of
man's belief, as it is dishonouring to God. It has
its origin doubtless in a salutary sense of sin ; but
sense of sin is not inspiration, though it may lie
not far from the temple-door. It is indeed an
opener of the eyes, but upon home-defilement, not
upon heavenly truth ; it is not the revealer of
secrets. Also there is another factor in the theory,
and that is unbelief — incapacity to accept the free-
dom of God's forgiveness ; incapacity to believe
that it is God's chosen nature to forgive, that he is
bound in his own divinely willed nature to forgive.
No atonement is necessary to him but that men
should leave their sins and come back to his heart.
But men cannot believe in the forgiveness of God.
Therefore they need, therefore he has given them
a mediator. And yet they will not know him.
They think of the father of souls as if he had ab-
dicated his fatherhood for their sins, and assumed
the judge. If he put off his fatherhood, which he
cannot do, for it is an eternal fact, he puts off with
it all relation to us. He cannot repudiate the

Justice 1 6 1

essential and keep the resultant. Men cannot, or
will not, or dare not see that nothing but his being
our father gives him any right over us — that nothing
but that could give him a perfect right. They re-
gard the father of their spirits as their governor !
They yield the idea of the Ancient of Days, ' the
glad creator,' and put in its stead a miserable, puri-
tanical martinet of a God, caring not for righteous-
ness, but for his rights ; not for the eternal purities,
but the goody proprieties. The prophets of such a
God take all the glow, all the hope, all the colour,
all the worth, out of life on earth, and offer you in-
stead what they call eternal bliss — a pale, tearless
hell. Of all things, turn from a mean, poverty-
stricken faith. But, if you are straitened in your
own mammon-worshipping soul, how shall you
believe in a God any greater than can stand up
in that prison-chamber?

I desire to wake no dispute, will myself dispute
with no man, but for the sake of those whom certain
believers trouble, I have spoken my mind. I love
the one God seen in the face of Jesus Christ.
From all copies of Jonathan Edwards's portrait of
God, however faded by time, however softened by
III. M

1 62 Unspoken Sermo7is : Third Se7'ies

the use of less glaring pigments, I turn with loath-
ing. Not such a God is he concerning whom was
the message John heard from Jesus, that he is light,
and in him is no darkness at all.

LIGHT.

This then is the message which we have heard of him, and
declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at
all.— l/u/zw i. 5.

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world,
and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were
ewW.— John iii. 19.

We call the story of Jesus, told so differently, yet
to my mind so consistently, by four narrators,
the gospel. What makes this tale the good newsl
Is everything in the story of Christ's life on earth
good news ? Is it good news that the one only good
man was served by his fellow-men as Jesus was served
— cast out of the world in torture and shame ? Is it
good news that he came to his own, and his own re-
ceived him not ? What makes it fit, I repeat, to call
the tale good jzezus ? If we asked this or that theo-
logian, we should, in so far as he was a true man,
and answered from his own heart and not from the
tradition of the elders, understand what he saw in
it that made it good news to him, though it might

1 64 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

involve what would be anything but good news to
some of us. The deliverance it might seem to this
or that man to bring, might be founded on such
notions of God as to not a few of us contain as
little of good as of news. To share in the deliver-
ance which some men find in what they call the
gospel — for all do not apply the word to the tale
itself, but to certain deductions made from the
epistles and their own consciousness of evil — we
should have to believe such things of God as would
be the opposite of an evangel to us — yea, a message
from hell itself; we should have to imagine that
whose possibility would be worse than any ill from
which their ' good news ' might offer us deliverance :
we must first believe in an unjust God, from whom
we have to seek refuge. True, they call him just,
but say he does that which seems to the best in me
the essence of injustice. They will tell me I judge
after the flesh: I answer, Is it then to the flesh the
Lord appeals when he says, 'Yea, and why even of
yourselves judge ye not what is right ? ' Is he not
the light that lighteth every man that cometh into
the world ? They tell me I was born in sin, and I
know it to be true ; they tell me also that I am
judged with the same severity as if I had been

Li^^ht 1 6 5

born in righteousness, and that I know to be false.
They make it a consequence of the purity and
justice of God that he will judge us, born in evil, for
which birth we were not accountable, by our sinful-
ness, instead of by our guilt. They tell me, or at
least give me to understand, that every wrong thing
I have done makes me subject to be treated as if
I had done that thing with the free will of one
who had in him no taint of evil — when, perhaps,
I did not at the time recognize the thing as evil, or
recognized it only in the vaguest fashion. Is there
any gospel in telling me that God is unjust, but
that there is a way of deliverance from him ? Show
me my God unjust, and you wake in me a damna-
tion from which no power can deliver me — least of
all God himself It may be good news to such as
are content to have a God capable of unrighteous-
ness, if only he be on their side !

Who would not rejoice to hear from Matthew,
or Mark, or Luke, what, in a few words, he meant
by the word gospel — or rather, what in the story of
Jesus made him call it good nezus ! Each would
probably give a different answer to the question,
all the answers consistent, and each a germ from
which the others might be reasoned ; but in the

1 66 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

case of John, we have his answer to the question :
he gives us in one sentence of two members, not
indeed the gospel according to John, but the gospel
according to Jesus Christ himself He had often
told the story, of Jesus, the good news of what he
was, and did, and said : what in it all did John look
upon as the essence of the goodness of its news ?
In his gospel he gives us all about him, the message
conccrniJig him ; now he tells us what in it makes
it to himself and to us good news — tells us the
very goodness of the good news. It is not now
his own message about Jesus, but the soul of that
message — that which makes it gospel — the news
Jesus brought concerning the Father, and gave to
the disciples as his message for them to deliver to
men. Throughout the story, Jesus, in all he does,
and is, and says, is telling the news concerning his
father, which he was sent to giv^e to John and his
companions, that they might hand it on to their
brothers ; but here, in so many words, John tells
us what he himself has heard from The Word —
what in sum he has gathered from Jesus as the
message he has to declare He has received it in
no systematic form ; it is what a life, the life, what
a man, the man, has taught him. The Word is

Light 167

the Lord ; the Lord is the gospel. The good
news is no fagot of sticks of a man's gathering on
the Sabbath.

Every man must read the Word for himself
One may read it in one shape, another in another :
all will be right if it be indeed the Word they read,
and they read it by the lamp of obedience. He
who is willing to do the will of the Father shall
know the truth of the teaching of Jesus. The
spirit is ' given to them that obey him.'

But let us hear how John reads the Word —
hear what is John's version of the gospel.

' This then is the message,' he says, ' which we
have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God
is light, and in him is no darkness at all.' Ah, my
heart, this is indeed the good news for thee ! This
is a gospel ! If God be light, what more, what
else can I seek than God, than God himself!
Away with your doctrines ! Away with your
salvation from the 'justice' of a God whom it is
a horror to imagine ! Away with your iron cages
of false metaphysics ! I am saved— for God is light!
My God, I come to thee. That thou shouldst be
thyself is enough for time and eternity, for my soul
and all its endless need. Whatever seems to me

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darkness, that I will not believe of my God. If
I should mistake, and call that darkness which is
light, will he not reveal the matter to me, setting
it in the light that lighteth every man, showing me
that I saw but the husk of the thing, not the kernel ?
Will he not break open the shell for me, and let
the truth of it, his thought, stream out upon me ?
He will not let it hurt me to mistake the light for
darkness, while I take not the darkness for light.
The one comes from blindness of the intellect, the
other from blindness of heart and will. I love the
light, and will not believe at the word of any man,
or upon the conviction of any man, that that which
seems to me darkness is in God. Where would the
good news be if John said, ' God is light, but you
cannot see his light ; you cannot tell, you have no
notion, what light is ; what God means by light, is
not what you mean by light ; what God calls light
may be horrible darkness to you, for you are of
another nature from him ! ' Where, I say, would
be the good news of that? It is true, the light of
God may be so bright that we sec nothing ; but
that is not darkness, it is infinite hope of light. It
is true also that to the wicked 'the day of the
Lord is darkness, and not light ; ' but is that be-

Light 169

cause the conscience of the wicked man judges of
good and evil oppositely to the conscience of the
good man ? When he says, ' Evil, be thou my
good,' he means by evil what God means by evil,
and by ^^(3^ he medins pleasure. He cannot make
the meanings change places. To say that what
our deepest conscience calls darkness may be light
to God, is blasphemy ; to say light in God and
light in man are of differing kinds, is to speak
against the spirit of light. God is light far beyond
what we can see, but what we mean by light, God
means by light ; and what is light to God is light
to us, or would be light to us if we saw it, and will
be light to us when we do see it. God means us
to be jubilant in the fact that he is light — that he
is what his children, made in his image, mean when
they say light ; that what in him is dark to them,
is dark by excellent glory, by too much cause of
jubilation ; that, however dark it may be to their
eyes, it is light even as they mean it, light for their
eyes and souls and hearts to take in the moment
they are enough of eyes, enough of souls, enough
of hearts, to receive it in its very being. Living
Light, thou wilt not have me believe anything dark
of thee ! thou wilt have me so sure of thee as to

1 70 Unspoken Sermons : TJiii^d Series

dare to say that is not of God which I see dark,
see unHke the Master ! If I am not honest enough,
if the eye in me be not single enough to see thy
light, thou wilt punish me, I thank thee, and purge
my eyes from their darkness, that they may let the
light in, and so I become an inheritor, with thy
other children, of that light which is thy Godhead,
and makes thy creatures need to worship thee.
' In thy light we shall see light.'

All men will not, in our present imperfection,
see the same light ; but light is light notwithstand-
ing, and what each does see, is his safety if he obeys
it. In proportion as we have the image of Christ
mirrored in us, we shall know what is and is not
light. But never will anything prove to be light
that is not of the same kind with that which we
mean by light, with that in a thing which makes
us call it light. The darkness yet left in us makes
us sometimes doubt of a thing whether it be light
or darkness ; but when the eye is single, the whole
body will be full of light.

To fear the light is to be untrue, or at least it
comes of untruth. No being, for himself or for
another, needs fear the light of God. Nothing can
be in lisrht inimical to our nature, which is of God,

Light 1 7 1

or to anything in us that is worthy. All fear of
the light, all dread lest there should be something
dangerous in it, comes of the darkness still in those
of us who do not love the truth with all our
hearts ; it will vanish as we are more and more
interpenetrated with the light. In a word, there is
no way of thought or action which we count ad-
mirable in man, in which God is not altogether
adorable. There is no loveliness, nothing that
makes man dear to his brother man, that is not in
God, only it is infinitely better in God. He is God
our saviour. Jesus is our saviour because God is
our saviour. He is the God of comfort and con-
solation. He will soothe and satisfy his children
better than any mother her infant. The only thing
he will not give them is — leave to stay in the dark.
If a child cry, ' I want the darkness,' and complain
that he will not give it, yet he will not give it.
He gives what his child needs — often by refusing
what he asks. If his child say, ' I will not be
good ; I prefer to die ; let me die ! ' his dealing
with that child will be as if he said — ' No ; I have
the right to content you, not giving you your own
will but mine, which is your one good. You shall
not die ; you shall live to thank me that I would

172 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

not hear your prayer. You know what you ask,
but not what you refuse.' There are good things
God must delay giving until his child has a pocket
to hold them — till he gets his child to make that
pocket. He must first make him fit to receive and
to have. There is no part of our nature that shall
not be satisfied — and that not by lessening it, but by
enlarging it to embrace an ever-enlarging enough.
Come to God, then, my brother, my sister, with
all thy desires and instincts, all thy lofty ideals,
all thy longing for purity and unselfishness, all thy
yearning to love and be true, all thy aspirations
after self-forgetfulness and child-life in the breath
of the Father ; come to him with all thy weak-
nesses, all thy shames, all thy futilities ; with all,
thy helplessness over thy own thoughts ; with all
thy failure, yea, with the sick sense of having
missed the tide of true affairs ; come to him with
all thy doubts, fears, dishonesties, meannesses,
paltrinesses, misjudgments, wearinesses, disappoint-
ments, and stalenesses : be sure he will take thee
and all thy miserable brood, whether of draggle-
winged angels, or covert-seeking snakes, into his
care, the angels for life, the snakes for death, and
thee for liberty in his limitless heart ! For he is

Light 173

light, and in him is no darkness at all. If he were
a king, a governor ; if the name that described
him were The Almighty, thou mightst well doubt
whether there could be light enough in him for
thee and thy darkness ; but he is thy father, and
more thy father than the word can mean in any
lips but his who said, ' my father and your father,
my God and your God ; ' and such a father is light,
an infinite, perfect light. If he were any less or
any other than he is, and thou couldst yet go on
growing, thou must at length come to the point
where thou wouldst be dissatisfied with him ; but
he is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If
anything seem to be in him that you cannot be
content with, be sure that the ripening of thy love
to thy fellows and to him, the source of thy being,
will make thee at length know that anything else
than just what he is would have been to thee an
endless loss. Be not afraid to build upon the rock
Christ, as if thy holy imagination might build too
high and heavy for that rock, and it must give way
and crumble beneath the weight of thy divine idea.
Let no one persuade thee that there is in him. a
little darkness, because of something he has said
which his creature interprets into darkness. The

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interpretation is the work of the enemy — a handful
of tares of darkness sown in the Hght. Neither let
thy cowardly conscience receive any word as light
because another calls it light, while it looks to
thee dark. Say either the thing is not what it
seems, or God never said or did it. But, of all
evils, to misinterpret what God does, and then say
the thing as interpreted must be right because God
docs it, is of the devil. Do not try to believe any-
thing that affects thee as darkness. Even if thou
mistake and refuse something true thereby, thou
wilt do less wrong to Christ by such a refusal than
thou wouldst by accepting as his what thou canst
see only as darkness. It is impossible thou art
seeing a true, a real thing — seeing it as it is, I
mean — if it looks to thee darkness. But let thy
words be few, lest thou say with thy tongue what
thou wilt afterward repent with thy heart. Above
all things believe in the light, that it is what thou
callest light, though the darkness in thee may give
thee cause at a time to doubt whether thou art
verily seeing the light.

' But there is another side to the matter : God
is light indeed, but there is darkness ; darkness is
death, and men are in it.'

Light 175

Yes ; darkness is death, but not death to him
that comes out of it.

It may sound paradoxical, but no man is con-
demned for anything he has done ; he is condemned
for continuing to do wrong. He is condemned for
not coming out of the darkness, for not coming to
the hght, the Hving God, who sent the hght, his
son, into the world to guide him home. Let us
hear what John says about the darkness.

For here also we have, I think, the word of the
apostle himself: at the 13th verse he begins, I
think, to speak in his own person. In the 19th
verse he says, ' And this is the condemnation,' —
not that men are sinners — not that they have done
that which, even at the moment, they were ashamed
of— not that they have committed murder, not that
they have betrayed man or woman, not that they
have ground the faces of the poor, making money
by the groans of their fellows — not for any hideous
thing are they condemned, but that they will not
leave such doings behind, and do them no more :
' This is the condemnation, that light is come into
the world, and men ' would not come out of the
darkness to the light, but ' loved darkness rather
than light, because their deeds were evil.' Choosing

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evil, clinging to evil, loving the darkness because
it suits with their deeds, therefore turning their
backs on the inbreaking light, how can they but
be condemned — if God be true, if he be light, and
darkness be alien to him ! Whatever of honesty
is in man, whatever of judgment is left in the
world, must allow that their condemnation is in the
very nature of things, that it must rest on them
and abide.

But if one happens to utter some individual
truth which another man has made into one of the
cogs of his system, he is in danger of being sup-
posed to accept all the toothed wheels and their
relations in that system. I therefore go on to say
that it does not follow, because light has come into
the world, that it has fallen upon this or that man.
He has his portion of the light that lighteth every
man, but the revelation of God in Christ may not
yet have reached him. A man might see and pass
the Lord in a crowd, nor be to blame like the
Jews of Jerusalem for not knowing him. A man
like Nathanael might have started and stopped at
the merest glimpse of him, but all growing men
are not yet like him without guile. Everyone who
has not yet come to the light is not necessarily

Light 177

keeping his face turned away from it. We dare
not say that this or that man would not have come
to the Hght had he seen it ; we do not know that
he will not come to the light the moment he does
see it. God gives every man time. There is a light
that lightens sage and savage, but the glory of God
in the face of Jesus may not have shined on this sage
or that savage. The condemnation is of those who,
having seen Jesus, refuse to come to him, or pretend
to come to him but do not the things he says. They
have all sorts of excuses at hand ; but as soon as a
man begins to make excuse, the time has come when
he might be doing that from which he excuses him-
self How many are there not who, believing there
is something somewhere with the claim of light upon
them, go on and on to get more out of the darkness !
This consciousness, all neglected by them, gives
broad ground for the expostulation of the Lord
— ' Ye will not come unto me that ye might have
life ! '

' All manner of sin and blasphemy,' the Lord
said, 'shall be forgiven unto men ; but the blasphemy
against the spirit shall not be forgiven.' God speaks,
as it were, in this manner : ' I forgive you every-
thing. Not a word more shall be said about your
III. N

178 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

sins — only come out of them ; come out of the
darkness of your exile ; come into the light of your
home, of your birthright, and do evil no more. Lie
no more ; cheat no more ; oppress no more ; slander
no more ; envy no more ; be neither greedy nor
vain ; love your neighbour as I love you ; be my
good child ; trust in your father. 1 am light ; come
to me, and you shall see things as I see them, and
hate the evil thing. I will make you love the
thing which now you call good and love not. I
forgive all the past.'

' I thank thee, Lord, for forgiving me, but I
prefer staying in the darkness : forgive me that
too.'

' No ; that cannot be. The one thing that can-
not be forgiven is the sin of choosing to be evil, of
refusing deliverance. It is impossible to forgive
that sin. It would be to take part in it. To side
with wrong against right, with murder against
life, cannot be forgiven. The thing that is past I
pass, but he who goes on doing the .same, annihi-
lates this my forgiveness, makes it of no effect. Let
a man have committed any sin whatever, I forgive
him ; but to choose to go on sinning — how can I
forcrive that ? It would be to nourish and cherish

Light 179

evil ! It would be to let my creation go to ruin.
Shall I keep you alive to do things hateful in the
sight of all true men ? If a man refuse to come
out of his sin, he must suffer the vengeance of a
love that would be no love if it left him there.
Shall I allow my creature to be the thing my soul
hates ? '

There is no excuse for this refusal. If we were
punished for every fault, there would be no end, no
respite ; we should have no quiet wherein to repent ;
but God passes by all he can. He passes by and
forgets a thousand sins, yea, tens of thousands, for-
giving them all — only we must begin to be good,
begin to do evil no more. He who refuses must be
punished and punished — punished through all the
ages — punished until he gives way, yields, and
comes to the light, that his deeds may be seen by
himself to be what they are, and be by himself re-
proved, and the Father at last have his child again.
For the man who in this world resists to the full,
there may be, perhaps, a whole age or era in the
history of the universe during which his sin shal
not be forgiven ; but never can it be forgiven
until he repents. How can they who will not
repent be forgiven, save in the sense that God does

N 2

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and will do all he can to make them repent ? Who
knows but such sin may need for its cure the
continuous punishment of an aeon ?

There are three conceivable kinds of punish-
ment— first, that of mere retribution, which I take
to be entirely and only human — therefore, indeed,
more properly inhuman, for that which is not divine
is not essential to hum.anity, and is of evil, and an
intrusion upon the human ; second, that which
works repentance ; and third, that which refines
and purifies, working for holiness. But the punish-
ment that falls on whom the Lord loveth because
they have repented, is a very different thing from
the punishment that falls on those whom he loveth
indeed but cannot forgive because they hold fast by
their sins.

There are also various ways in which the word
forgive can be used. A man might say to his son —
' My boy, I forgive you. You did not know what
you were doing. I will say no more about it.'
Or he might say — ' My boy, I forgive you ; but I
must punish you, for you have done the same thing
several times, and I must make you remember.'
Or, again, he might say — ' I am seriously angry
with you. I cannot forgive you. I must punish

Light i8i

you severely. The thing was too shameful ! I can-
not pass it by.' Or, once more, he might say —
' Except you alter your ways entirely, I shall have
nothing more to do with you. You need not come
to me. I will not take the responsibility of any-
thing you do. So far from answering for you, I
shall feel bound in honesty to warn my friends not
to put confidence in you. Never, never, till I
see a greater difference in you than I dare hope to
see in this world, will I forgive you. I can no more
regard you as one of the family. I would die to
save you, but I cannot forgive you. There is
nothing in you now on which to rest forgiveness.
To say, I forgive you, would be to say, Do anything
you like ; I do not care what you do.' So God may
forgive and punish ; and he may punish and not
forgive, that he may rescue. To forgive the sin
against the holy spirit would be to damn the
universe to the pit of lies, to render it impossible
for the man so forgiven ever to be saved. He
cannot forgive the man who will not come to the
light because his deeds are evil. Against that man
his fatherly heart is moved with indignation.

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THE DISPLEASURE OF JESUS.

When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also
weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was
troubled. ^/(?/^« xi. 33.

Grimm, in his lexicon to the New Testament, after
giving as the equivalent of the word i/jL/Spifidofxai,
in pagan use, ' I am moved with anger,' ' I roar or
growl,' ' I snort at,' ' I am vehemently angry or in-
dignant with some one,' tells us that in Mark i. 43,
and Matthew ix. 30, it has a meaning different
from that of the pagans, namely, ' I command with
severe admonishment.' That he has any authority
for saying so, I do not imagine, and believe the
statement a blunder. The Translators and Re-
visers, however, have in those passages used the
word similarly, and in one place, the passage be-
fore us, where a true version is of yet more conse-
quence, have taken another liberty and rendered
the word ' groaned.' The Revisers, at the same
time, place in the margin what I cannot but be-

The Displeasure of Jesus 183

lieve its true meaning — ' was moved with indig-
nation.'

Let us look at all the passages in which the
word is used of the Lord, and so, if we may, learn
something concerning him. The only place in the
gospel where it is used of any but the Lord is Mark
xiv. 5. Here both versions say of the disciples that
they ' murmured at ' the waste of the ointment by
one of the women who anointed the Lord. With
regard to this rendering I need only remark that
surely ' murmured at ' can hardly be strong enough,
especially seeing ' they had indignation among
themselves ' at the action.

It is indeed right and necessary to insist that
many a word must differ in moral weight and
colour as used of or by persons of different character.
The anger of a good man is a very different thing
from the anger of a bad man ; the displeasure of
Jesus must be a very different thing from the dis-
pleasure of a tyrant. But they are both anger,
both displeasure, nevertheless. We have no right
to change a root-meaning, and say in one case that
a word means lie zvas indignant, in another that it
means he straitly or strictly charged, and in a third
that it means he groaned. Surely not thus shall we

1 84 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

arrive at the truth ! If any statement is made, any
word employed, that we feel unworthy of the Lord,
let us refuse it ; let us say, ' I do not believe that ; '
or, ' There must be something there that I cannot
see into": I must wait ; it cannot be what it looks
to me, and be true of the Lord ! ' But to accept
the word as used of the Lord, and say it means
something quite different from what it means when
used by the same writer of some one else, appears
to me untruthful.

We shall take first the passage, Mark i. 43— in
the authorized version, 'And he straitly charged
him;' in the revised, 'And he strictly charged him,'
with 'sternly'' in the margin. Literally, as it seems
to me, it reads, and ought to be read, 'And being
angry ' or ' displeased ' or ' vexed ' ' with him, he
immediately dismissed him.' There is even some
dissatisfaction implied, I think, in the word I have
translated ' dismissed.' The word in John ix. 34,
' they cast him out,' is the same, only a little in-
tensified.

This adds something to the story, and raises
the question, Why should Jesus have been angr)- ?
If we can find no reason for his anger, we
must leave the thing as altogether obscure ; for I

The Displeasure of Jesiis 185

do not know where to find another meaning for the
word, except in the despair of a would-be inter-
preter.

Jesus had cured the leper — not with his word
only, which would have been enough for the mere
cure, but was not enough without the touch of his
hand — the Sinaitic version says ' his hands ' — to
satisfy the heart of Jesus — a touch defiling him, in
the notion of the Jew, but how cleansing to the
sense of the leper ! The man, however, seems
to have been unworthy of this delicacy of divine
tenderness. The Lord, who could read his heart,
saw that he made him no true response — that there
was not awaked in him the faith he desired to
rouse : he had not drawn the soul of the man to
his. The leper was jubilant in the removal of his
pain and isolating uncleanness, in his deliverance
from suffering and scorn ; he was probably elated
with the pride of having had a miracle wrought for
him. In a word, he was so full of himself that he
did not think truly of his deliverer.

The Lord, I say, saw this, or something of this
kind, and was not satisfied. He had wanted to
give the man something so much better than a pure
skin, and had only roused in him an unseemly

1 86 Unspoken Sermons : TJiird Series

delight in his own cleanness — unseemly, for it was
such that he paid no heed to the Lord, but imme-
diately disobeyed his positive command. The
moral position the man took was that which dis-
pleased the Lord, made him angry. He saw in
him positive and rampant self-will and disobedi-
ence, an impertinent assurance and self-satisfaction.
Filled, not with pure delight, or the child-like merri-
ment that might well burst forth, mingled with tears,
at such deliverance ; filled, not with gratitude, but
gratification, the keener that he had been so long
an object of loathing to his people ; filled with
arrogance because of the favour shown to him, of
all men, by the great prophet, and swelling with
boast of the same, he left the presence of the
healer to thwart his will, and, commanded to tell
no man, at once ' began ' — the frothy, volatile,
talking soul — 'to publish it much, and to blaze
abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no
more openly enter into a city, but was without in
desert places.'

Let us next look at the account of the healing of
the two blind men, given in the ninth chapter of
Matthew's gospel. In both the versions the same
phrases are used in translation of the word in ques-

The Displeasure of Jesus 187

tion, as in the story of the leper in Mark's gospel —
' straitly,' ' strictly,' ' sternly charged them.' I read
the passage thus : 'And Jesus was displeased ' — or,
perhaps, ' much displeased ' — ' with them, saying.
See that no man know it.'

' But they went forth, and spread abroad his
fame in all that land.' Surely here we have light
on the cause of Jesus' displeasure with the blind
men ! it was the same with them as with the leper :
they showed themselves bent on their own way,
and did not care for his. Doubtless they were, in
part, all of them moved by the desire to spread
abroad his fame ; that may even have seemed to
them the best acknowledgment they could render
their deliverer. They never suspected that a great
man might desire to avoid fame, laying no value
upon it, knowing it for a foolish thing. They did
not understand that a man desirous of helping his
fellows might yet avoid a crowd as obstructive to
his object. ' What is a prophet without honour ? '
such virtually ask, nor understand the answer, ' A
man the more likely to prove a prophet' These
men would repay their healer with trumpeting, not
obedience. By them he should have his right — but
as they not he judged fit ! In his nlodesty he

iSS Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

objected, but they would take care he should not.
go without his reward ! Through them he should
reap the praises of men ! ' Not tell ! ' they exclaim.
* Indeed, we will tell ! ' They were too grateful not
to rumour him, not grateful enough to obey him.

We cannot surely be amazed at their self-
sufficiency. How many are there not who seem
capable of anything for the sake of the church or
Christianity, except the one thing its Lord cares
about — that they should do what he tells them !
He would deliver them from themselves into the
liberty of the sons of God, make them his brothers ;
they leave him to vaunt their church. His com-
mandments are not grievous ; they invent com-
mandments for him, and lay them, burdens grievous
to be borne, upon the necks of their brethren.
God would have us sharers in his bliss — in the very
truth of existence ; they worship from afar, and
will not draw nigh. It was not, I think, the obstruc-
tion to his work, not the personal inconvenience
it would cause him, that made the Lord angry, but
that they would not be his friends, would not do
what he told them, would not be the children of
his father, and help him to save their brethren.
When Peter in his way next — much the same way

The Displeasure of Jesus

as theirs — opposed the will of the Father, saying,
' That be far from thee, Lord ! ' he called him Satan,
and ordered him behind him.

Does it affect anyone to the lowering of his idea
of the Master that he should ever be angry? If
so, I would ask him whether his whole conscious
experience of anger be such, that he knows but one
kind of anger. There is a good anger and a bad
anger. There is a wrath of God, and there is a
wrath of man that worketh not the righteousness
of God. Anger may be as varied as the colour of
the rainbow. God's anger can be nothing but
Godlike, therefore divinely beautiful, at one with
his love, helpful, healing, restoring ; yet is it verily
and truly what we call anger. How different is
the anger of one who loves, from that of one who
hates ! yet is anger anger. There is the degraded
human anger, and the grand, noble, eternal anger.
Our anger is in general degrading, because it is in
general impure.

It is to me an especially glad thought that the
Lord came so near us as to be angry with us.
The more we think of Jesus being angry with us,
the more we feel that we must get nearer and
nearer to him — get within the circle of his wrath,

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out of the sin that makes him angry, and near to
him where sin cannot come. There is no quench-
ing of his love in the anger of Jesus. The anger of
Jesus is his recognition that we are to blame ; if
we were not to blame, Jesus could never be angry
with us ; we should not be of his kind, there-
fore not subject to his blame. To recognize
that we are to blame, is to say that we ought
to be better, that we are able to do right if we
will. We are able to turn our faces to the light,
and come out of the darkness ; the Lord will see to
our growth.

It is a serious thought that the disobedience
of the men he had set free from blindness and
leprosy should be able to hamper him in his work
for his father. But his best friends, his lovers did
the same. That he should be crucified was a horror
to them ; they would have made him a king, and
ruined his father's work. He preferred the cruelty
of his enemies to the kindness of his friends. The
former with evil intent wrought his father's will ;
the latter with good intent would have frustrated
it. His disciples troubled him with their un-
believing expostulations. Let us know that the
poverty of our idea of Jesus — how much more our

The Displeasure of Jesus 191

disobedience to him ! — thwarts his progress to
victory, delays the coming of the kingdom of
heaven. Many a man valiant for Christ, but not
understanding him, and laying on himself and his
fellows burdens against nature, has therein done
will-worship and would-be service for which Christ
will give him little thanks, which indeed may now
be moving his holy anger. Where we do that we
ought not, and could have helped it, be moved
to anger against us, O Christ ! do not treat us as if
we were not worth being displeased with ; let not
our faults pass as if they were of no weight. Be
angry with us, holy brother, wherein we are to
blame ; where we do not understand, have patience
with us, and open our eyes, and give us strength to
obey, until at length we are the children of the
Father even as thou. For though thou art lord
and master and saviour of them that are growing,
thou art perfect lord only of the true and the safe
and the free, who live in thy light and are divinely
glad : we keep thee back from thy perfect lord-
ship. Make us able to be angry and not sin ; to
be angry nor seek revenge the smallest ; to be
angry and full of forgiveness. We will not be
content till our very anger is love.

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The Lord did not call the leprosy to return
and seize again upon the man who disobeyed him.
He may have deserved it, but the Lord did not do
it. He did not wrap the self-confident seeing men
in the cloud of their old darkness because they
wrapped themselves in the cloud of disobedience.
He let them go. Of course they failed of their well-
being by it ; for to say a man might disobey and
be none the worse, would be to say that 7io may
be yes, and light sometimes darkness ; it would
be to say that the will of God is not man's bliss.
But the Lord did not directly punish them, any
more than he does tens of thousands of wrongs in
the world. Many wrongs punish themselves against
the bosses of armed law ; many wrong-doers cut
themselves, like the priests of Baal, with the knives
of their own injustice ; and it is his will it should be
so ; but, whether he punish directly or indirectly, he
is always working to deliver. I think sometimes his
anger is followed, yea, accompanied by an astound-
ing gift, fresh from his heart of grace. He knows
what to do, for he is love. He is love when he
gives, and love when he withholds ; love when he
heals, and love when he slays. Lord, if thus thou
lookest upon men in thine anger, what must a full
gaze be from thine eyes of love !

The Displeaszire of Jesus [93

Let us now look at the last case in which this
word lyt^^pniaoixai is used in the story of our Lord —
that form of it, at least, which we have down here,
for sure they have a fuller gospel in the Father s
house, and without spot of blunder in it : let us so
use that we have that we be allowed at length to
look within the leaves of the other !

In the authorized version of the gospel of John,
the eleventh chapter, the thirty-third verse, we
have the words : ' When Jesus therefore saw her
weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came
with her, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled ; '
— according to the margin of the revised version,
' he was moved with indignation in the spirit, and
troubled himself Also in the thirty-eighth verse
we read, according to the margin of the revised
version, 'Jesus therefore again being moved with
indignation in himself cometh to the tomb.'

Indignation— anger at the very tomb ! in the
presence of hearts torn by the loss of a brother
four days dead, whom also he loved ! Yes, verily,
friends ! such indignation, such anger as, at such a
time, in such a place, it was eternally right the
heart of Jesus should be moved withal. I can
hardly doubt that he is in like manner moved by

III. O

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what he sees now at the death-beds and graves of
not a few who are not his enemies, and yet in the
presence of death seem no better than pagans.
What have such gained by being the Christians
they say they are ? They fix their eyes on a
grisly phantasm they call Death, and never lift
them to the radiant Christ standing by bed or
grave ! For them Christ has not conquered
Death :

Thou art our king, O Death ! to thee we groan !

They would shudder at the thought of saying so in
words ; they say it in the bitterness of their tears,
in their eyes of despair, in their black garments,
in their instant retreat from the light of day to
burrow in the bosom of darkness? 'What, would
you have us not weep ? ' Weep freely, friends ;
but let your tears be those of expectant Chris-
tians, not hopeless pagans. Let us look at the
story.

The Lord had all this time been trying to
teach his friends about his father — what a blessed
and perfect father he was, who had sent him that
men might look on his very likeness, and know
him crreater than any likeness could show him ;

The Displeasure of Jesus 1 95

and all they had gained by it seemed not to
amount to an atom of consolation when the touch
of death came. He had said hundreds of things
to Martha and Mary that are not down in the few
pages of our earthly gospel ; but the fact that God
loves them, and that God has Lazarus, seems
nothing to them because they have not Lazarus !
The Lord himself, for all he has been to them,
cannot console them, even with his bodily presence,
for the bodily absence of their brother. I do
not mean that God would have even his closest
presence make us forget or cease to desire that of
our friend. God forbid ! The love of God is the
perfecting of every love. He is not the God of
oblivion, but of eternal remembrance. There is
no past with him. So far is he from such jealousy
as we have all heard imputed to him, his determi-
nation is that his sons and daughters shall love
each other perfectly. He gave us to each other
to belong to each other for ever. He does not
give to take away ; with him is no variableness or
shadow of turning. But if my son or daughter be
gone from me for a season, should not the coming
of their mother comfort me ? Is it nothing that
he who is the life should be present, assuring the

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well-being of the life that has vanished, and the
well-being of the love that misses it ? Why should
the Lord have come to the world at all, if these
his friends were to take no more good of him than
this? Having the elder brother, could they not
do for a little while without the younger ? Must
they be absolutely miserable without him ? All
their cry was, * Lord, if thou hadst been here, my
brother had not died ! ' You may say they did
not know Christ well enough yet. That is plain
— but Christ had expected more of them, and was
disappointed. You may say, ' How could that be,
seeing he knew what was in man ? ' I doubt if
you think rightly how much the Lord gave up in
coming to us. Perhaps you have a poor idea of
how much the Son was able to part with, or rather
could let the Father take from him, without his
sonship, the eternal to the eternal, being touched
by it, save to show it deeper and deeper, closer and
closer. That he did not in this world know
everything, is plain from his own words, and from
signs as well : I should scorn to imagine that
ignorance touching his Godhead, that his Godhead
could be hurt by what enhances his devotion. It
enhances in my eyes the idea of his Godhead.

The Displeastu'c of Jesus 197

Here, I repeat, I cannot but think that he was
disappointed with his friends Martha and Mary.
Had he done no more for them than this ? Was
his father and their father no comfort to them ?
Was this the way his best friends treated his
father, who was doing everything for them possible
for a father to do for his children ! He cared so
dearly for their hearts that he could not endure to
see them weeping so that they shut out his father.
His love was vexed with them that they would sit
in ashes when they ought to be out in his father's
sun and wind. And all for a lie! — since the feeling
in their hearts that made them so weep, was a
false one. Remember, it was not their love, but
a false notion of loss. Were they no nearer the
light of life than that ? To think they should
believe in death and the grave, not in him, the
Life ! Why should death trouble them ? Why
grudge the friendly elements their grasp on the
body, restoring it whence it came, because Lazarus
was gone home to God, and needed it no more ?
I suspect that, looking into their hearts, he saw
them feeling and acting just as if Lazarus had
ceased to exist.

' Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had

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not died. But I know, that even now, whatsoever
thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.'

' Thy brother shall rise again.'

' I know that he shall rise again in the resurrec-
tion at the last day.'

' I am the resurrection, and the life : he that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live. And whosoever liveth, and believeth in me,
shall never die.'

I will not now endeavour to disclose anything
of the depth of this word of the Lord. It will
suffice for my present object to say that the sisters
must surely have known that he raised up the
daughter of Jairus and the son of the widow of
Nain ; and if the words he had just spoken, ' Thy
brother shall rise again,' seemed to Martha too
good to be true in the sense that he was going to
raise him now, both she and Mary believing he
could raise him if he would, might at least have
known that if he did not, it must be for reasons as
lovely as any for which he might have done it. If
he could, and did not, must it not be as well a.s,
yes, better than if he did ?

Martha had gone away, for the moment at
least, a little comforted ; and now came Mary,

The DispleasiiJ'e of Jesus 199

who knew the Lord better than her sister — alas,
with the same bitter tears flowing from her eyes,
and the same hopeless words, almost of reproach,
falling from her lips ! Then it was — at the sight
of her and the Jews with her weeping, that the
spirit of the Lord was moved with indignation.
They wept as those who believe in death, not in
life. Mary wept as if she had never seen with her
eyes, never handled with her hands the Word of
life ! He was troubled with their unbelief, and
troubled with their trouble. What was to be done
with his brothers and sisters who luoidd be miser-
able, who would not believe in his father ! What
a life of pain was theirs ! How was he to comfort
them ? They would not be comforted ! What a
world was it that would go on thus — that would
not free itself from the clutch of death, even after
death was dead, but would weep and weep for
thousands of years to come, clasped to the bosom
of dead Death ! Was existence, the glorious out-
gift of his father, to be the most terrible of miseries,
because some must go home before others ? It was
all so sad ! — and all because they would not know
his father ! Then came the reaction from his in-
dignation, and the labouring heart of the Lord
found relief in tears.

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The Lord was standing, as it were, on the water-
shed of hfe. On one side of him lay what Martha
and Mary called the world of life, on the other what
he and his father and Lazarus called more abundant
life. The Lord saw into both worlds — saw Martha
and Mary on the one side weeping, on the other
Lazarus waiting for them in peace. He would
do his best for them — for the sisters — not for
Lazarus ! It was hard on Lazarus to be called
back into the winding-sheet of the body, a
sacrifice to their faithlessness, but it should be
done ! Lazarus should suffer for his sisters !
Through him they should be compelled to
believe in the Father, and so be delivered from
bondage ! Death should have no more dominion
over them !

He was vexed with them, I have said, for not
believing in God, his and their father; and at the
same time was troubled with their trouble. The
cloud of his loving anger and disappointed sym-
pathy broke in tears ; and the tears eased his heart
of the weight of its divine grief. He turned, not
to them, not to punish them for their unbelief, not
even to chide them for their sorrow ; he turned to
his father to thank him.

The Displeasure of Jesus 201

He thanks him for hearing a prayer he had
made — whether a moment before, or ere he left
the other side of the Jordan, I cannot tell. What
was the prayer for having heard which he now
thanks his father ? Surely he had spoken about
bringing Lazarus back, and his father had shown
himself of one mind with him. ' And I knew that
thou hearest me always, but because of the multi-
tude which standeth around I said it, that they
may believe that thou didst send me.' ' I said it : '
said what ? He had said something for the sake
of the multitude ; what was it ? The thanksgiving
he had just uttered. He was not in the way of
thanking his father in formal words ; and now
would not naturally have spoken his thanks aloud ;
for he was always speaking to the Father, and the
Father was always hearing him ; but he had a
reason for doing so, and was now going to give his
reason. He had done the unusual thing for the
sake of being heard do it, and for holy honesty-
sake he tells the fact, speaking to his father so as
the people about him may hear, and there be no
shadow of undisclosed doubleness in the action
— nothing covert, however perfect in honesty. His
design in thus thanking aloud must be made patent !

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' I thank thee, father, for hearing me ; and I say it,
not as if I had had any doubt of thy hearing me,
but that the people may understand that I am
not doing this thing of myself, but as thy mes-
senger. It is thou, father, art. going to do it ; I
am doing it as thy right hand. — Lazarus, come
forth.'

I have said the trouble of the Lord was that
his friends would not trust his father. He did
not want any reception of himself that was not a
reception of his father. It w^as his father, not he,
that did the works ! From this disappointment
came, it seems to me, that sorrowful sigh, ' Never-
theless, when the son of man cometh, shall he find
faith on the earth ? '

The thought of the Lord in uttering this prayer
is not his own justification, but his father's reception
by his children. If ever the Lord claims to be re-
ceived as a true man, it is for the sake of his father
and his brethren, that in the receiving of him, he
may be received who sent him. Had he now
desired the justification of his own claim, the thing
he was about to do would have been powerful to
that end ; but he must have them understand
clearly that the Father was one with him in it —

The Displeasure of Jesus 203

that they were doing it together — that it was the
will of the Father — that he had sent him.

Lazarus must come and help him with these
sisters whom he could not get to believe ! Lazarus
had tasted of death, and knew what it was : he
must come and give his testimony ! ' They have
lost sight of you, Lazarus, and fancy you gone to
the nowhere of their unbelief Come forth ; come
out of the unseen. We will set them at rest.' It
was hard, I repeat, upon Lazarus ; he was better
where he was ; but he must come and bear the
Lord company a little longer, and then be left
behind with his sisters, that they and millions
more like them might know that God is the God
of the living, and not of the dead.

The Jews said, ' Behold how he loved him ! '
but can any Christian believe it was from love to
Lazarus that Jesus wept ? It was from love to
God, and to Martha and Mary. He had not lost
Lazarus ; but Martha and Mary were astray from
their father in heaven. ' Come, my brother ; wit-
ness ! ' he cried ; and Lazarus came forth, bound
hand and foot. ' Loose him and let him go,' he
said — a live truth walking about the world : he
had never been dead, and was come forth ; l-te had

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not been lost, and was restored ! It was a strange
door he came through, back to his own — a door
seldom used, known only to one — but there he
was ! Oh, the hearts of Martha and Mary !
Surely the Lord had some recompense for his
trouble, beholding their joy !

Any Christian woman who has read thus far,
I now beg to reflect on what I am going to put
before her.

Lazarus had to die again, and thanked God, we
may be sure, for the glad fact. Did his sisters,
supposing them again left behind him in the
world, make the same lamentations over him as
the former time he went ? If they did, if they
fell again into that passion of grief, lamenting and
moaning and refusing to be comforted, what would
you say of them ? I imagine something to this
effect : ' It was most unworthy of them to be no
better for such a favour shown them. It was to
behave like the naughtiest of faithless children.
Did they not know that he was not lost ? — that he
was with the Master, who had himself seemed lost
for a few days, but came again ? He was no more
lost now than the time he went before ! Could
they not trust that he who brought him back once

The Displeasure of Jesus 205

would take care they should have him for ever
at last ! ' Would you not speak after some such
fashion ? Would you not remember that he who
is the shepherd of the sheep will see that the sheep
that love one another shall have their own again,
in whatever different pastures they may feed for
a time ? Would it not be hard to persuade you
that they ever did so behave ? They must have
felt that he was but ' gone for a minute . . . from
this room into the next ; ' and that, however they
might miss him, it would be a shame not to be
patient when they knew there was nothing to fear.
It was all right with him, and would soon be all
right with them also !

'Yes,' I imagine you saying, 'that is just how
they would feel ! '

' Then,' I return, ' why are j'(?z^ so miserable? Or
why is it but the cold frost of use and forgetting
that makes you less miserable than you were a year
ago?'

' Ah,' you answer, ' but I had no such miracle
wrought for me ! Ah, if I had such a miracle
wrought for me, you should see then ! '

' You mean that if your husband, your son, your
father, your brother, your lover, had been taken from

2o6 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

you once and given to you again, you would not,
when the time came that he must go once more,
dream of calhng him a second time from the good
heaven? You would not be cruel enough for that !
You would not bemoan or lament ! You would not
make the heart of the Lord sad with your hopeless
tears ! Ah, how little you know yourself! Do
you not see that, so far as truth and reason are
concerned, you are now in precisely the position
supposed — the position of those sisters after Lazarus
was taken from them the second time ? You know
now all they knew then. They had no more of a
revelation by the recall of Lazarus than you have.
For you profess to believe the story, though you
make that doubtful enough by your disregard of
the very soul of it. Is it possible that, so far as
you are concerned, Lazarus might as well not have
risen ? What difference is there between your
position now and theirs ? Lazarus was with God,
and they knew he had gone, come back, and gone
again. You know that he went, came, and went
again. Your friend is gone as Lazarus went twice,
and you behave as if you knew nothing of Lazarus.
You make a lamentable ado, vexing Jesus that
you will not be reasonable and trust his father !

The Displeasure of Jes2is 207

When Martha and Mary behaved as you are doing,
they had not had Lazarus raised; you have had
Lazarus raised, yet you go on as they did then !

' You give too good reason to think that, if the
same thing were done for you, you would say lie
was only in a cataleptic fit, and in truth was
never raised from the dead. Or is there another
way of understanding your behaviour : you do not
believe that God is unchangeable, but think he
acts one way one time and another way another
time just from caprice ? He might give back a
brother to sisters who were favourites with him,
but no such gift is to be counted upon ? Why
then, I ask, do you worship such a God ? '

' But you know he does not do it ! That was a
mere exceptional case,'

' If it was, it is worthless indeed — as worthless
as your behaviour would make it. But you are
dull of heart, as were Martha and Mary. Do you
not see that he is as continually restoring as taking
away — that every bereavement is a restoration —
that when you are weeping with void arms, others,
who love as well as you, are clasping in ecstasy of
reunion ? '

' Alas, we know nothing about that ! '

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' If you have learned no more I must leave you,
having no ground in you upon which my words
may fall. You deceived me ; you called yourself
a Christian. You cannot have been doing the will
of the Father, or you would not be as you are.'

' Ah, you little know my loss ! '

' Indeed it is great ! it seems to include God !
If you knew what he knows about death you would
clap your listless hands. But why should I seek
in vain to comfort you? You must be made
miserable, that you may wake from your sleep to
know that you need God. If you do not find him,
endless life with the living whom you bemoan
would become and remain to you unendurable.
The knowledge of your own heart will teach you
this — not the knowledge you have, but the know-
ledge that is on its way to you through suffering.
Then you will feel that existence itself is the
prime of evils, without the righteousness which is of
God by faith.'

209

RIGHTEO US NESS.

— that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine
own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through
the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.
Ep. to the Philippians iii. 8, 9.

What does the apostle mean by the righteousness
that is of God by faith ? He means the same
righteousness Christ had by his faith in God, the
same righteousness God himself has.

In his second epistle to the Corinthians he says,
' He hath made him to be sin for us who knew no
sin, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him ; ' — ' He gave him to be treated like a
sinner, killed and cast out of his own vineyard by
his husbandmen, that we might in him be made
righteous like God.' As the antithesis stands it is
rhetorically correct. But if the former half means,
' he made him to be treated as if he were a
sinner,' then the latter half should, in logical pre-
cision, mean, ' that we might be treated as if we
were righteous.'

III. P

2IO Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

' That is just what Paul does mean,' insist not
a few. ' He means that Jesus was treated by God
as if he were a sinner, our sins being imputed to
him, in order that we might be treated as if we
were righteous, his righteousness being imputed
to us.'

That is, that, by a sort of legal fiction, Jesus
was treated as what he was not, in order that we
might be treated as what we are not. This is the
best device, according to the prevailing theology,
that the God of truth, the God of mercy, whose
glory is that he is just to men by forgiving their
sins, could fall upon for saving his creatures !

I had thought that this most contemptible of
false doctrines had nigh ceased to be presented,
though I knew it must be long before it ceased to
exercise baneful influence ; but, to my astonish-
ment, I came upon it lately in quite a modern
commentary which I happened to look into in a
friend's house. I say, to my astonishment, for the
commentary was the work of one of the most
liberal and lovely of Christians, a dignitary high in
the church of England, a man whom I knew and
love, and hope ere long to meet where there are no
churches. In the comment that came under my eye,

Rio;hteotisness 2 1 1

he refers to the doctrine of imputed righteousness
as the possible explanation of a certain passage —
refers to it as to a doctrine concerning whose truth
was no question.

It seems to me that, seeing much duplicity exists
in the body of Christ, every honest member of it
should protest against any word tending to imply
the existence of falsehood in the indwelling spirit
of that body. I now protest against this so-called
doctrine, counting it the rightful prey of the
foolishest wind in the limbo of vanities, whither I
would gladly do my best to send it. It is a mean,
nauseous invention, false, and productive of false-
hood. Say it is a figure, I answer it is not only a
false figure but an embodiment of untruth ; say it
expresses a reality, and I say it teaches the worst
of lies ; say there is a shadow of truth in it, and I
answer it may be so, but there is no truth touched
in it that could not be taught infinitely better
without it. It is the meagre misshapen offspring
of the legalism of a poverty-stricken mechanical
fancy, unlighted by a gleam of divine imagination.
No one who knows his New Testament will dare
to say that the figure is once used in it.

I have dealt already with the source of it.

p 2

2 1 2 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

They say first, God must punish the sinner, for
justice requires it ; then they say he does not
punish the sinner, but punishes a perfectly righteous
man instead, attributes his righteousness to the
sinner, and so continues just. Was there ever such
a confusion, such an inversion of right and wrong !
Justice could not treat a righteous man as an un-
righteous ; neither, if justice required the punish-
ment of sin, could justice let the sinner go un-
punished. To lay the pain upon the righteous in
the name of justice is simply monstrous. No
wonder unbelief is rampant. Believe in Moloch if
you will, but call him Moloch, not Justice. Be
sure that the thing that God gives, the righteous-
ness that is of God, is a real thing, and not a con-
temptible legalism. Pray God I have no righteous-
ness imputed to me. Let me be regarded as the
sinner I am ; for nothing will serve my need but
to be made a righteous man, one that will no more
sin.

We have the word imputed just once in the
New Testament. Whether the evil doctrine may
have sprung from any possible misunderstanding
of the passage where it occurs, I hardly care to
inquire. The word as Paul uses it, and the whole

Righteousness

of the thought whence his use of it springs, appeals
to my sense of right and justice as much as the
common use of it arouses my abhorrence. The
apostle says that a certain thing was imputed to
Abraham for righteousness ; or, as the revised ver-
sion has it, ' reckoned unto him : ' what was it that
was thus imputed to Abraham? The righteous-
ness of another ? God forbid ! It was his own
faith. The faith of Abraham is reckoned to him
for righteousness. To impute the righteousness of
one to another, is simply to act a falsehood; to
call the faith of a man his righteousness is simply to
speak the truth. Was it not righteous in Abraham
to obey God ? The Jews placed righteousness in
keeping all the particulars of the law of Moses :
Paul says faith in God was counted righteousness
before Moses was born. You may answer, Abraham
was unjust in many things, and by no means a
righteous man. True; he was not a righteous
man in any complete sense ; his righteousness
would never have satisfied Paul ; neither, you may
be sure, did it satisfy Abraham ; but his faith was
nevertheless righteousness, and if it had not been
counted to him for righteousness, there would
have been falsehood somewhere, for such faith as

2 1 4 Uiispoken Sermons : Third Series

Abraham's is rigJiteousness. It was no mere intel-
lectual recognition of the existence of a God, which
is consistent vvith the deepest atheism ; it was that
faith which is one with action : ' He went out,
not knowing whither he went'.' The very act of
believing in God after such fashion that, when the
time of action comes, the man will obey God, is the
highest act, the deepest, loftiest righteousness of
which man is capable, is at the root of all other
righteousness, and the spirit of it will work till the
man is perfect. If you define righteousness in the
common-sense, that is, in the divine fashion— for
religion is nothing if it be not the deepest common-
sense — as a giving to everyone his due, then cer-
tainly the first due is to him who makes us capable
of owing, that is, makes us responsible creatures.
You may say this is not one's first feeling of duty.
True ; but the first in reality is seldom the first
perceived. The first duty is too high and too
deep to come first into consciousness. If any one
were born perfect, which I count an eternal impossi-
bility, then the highest duty would come first into
the consciousness. As we are born, it is the doing
of, or at least the honest trying to do many another
duty, that will at length lead a man to see that his

Righteousness 2 1 5

duty to God is the first and deepest and highest of
all, including and requiring the performance of all
other duties whatever. A man might live a thou-
sand years in neglect of duty, and never come to
see that any obligation was upon him to put faith
in God and do what he told him — never have a
glimpse of the fact that he owed him something.
I will allow that if God were what he thinks him
he would indeed owe him little ; but he thinks him
such in consequence of not doing what he knows
he ought to do. He has not come to the light.
He has deadened, dulled, hardened his nature. He
has not been a man without guile, has not been
true and fair.

But while faith in God is the first duty, and
may therefore well be called righteousness in the
man in whom it is operative, even though it be
im.perfect, there is more reason than this why it
should be counted to a man for righteousness. It
is the one spiritual act which brings the man into
contact with the original creative power, able to
help him in every endeavour after righteousness,
and ensure his progress to perfection. The man
who exercises it may therefore also well be called
a righteous man, however far from complete in

2 1 6 Unspoken Serinons : Third Seines

righteousness. We may call a woman beautiful
who is not perfect in beauty ; in the Bible men are
constantly recognized as righteous men who are
far from perfectly righteous. The Bible never
deals with impossibilities, never demands of any
man at any given moment a righteousness of which
at that moment he is incapable ; neither does it
lay upon any man any other law than that of per-
fect righteousness. It demands of him righteous-
ness ; when he yields that righteousness of which
he is capable, content for the moment, it goes on
to demand more : the common-sense of the Bible
is lovely.

To the man who has no faith in God, faith in
God cannot look like righteousness ; neither can
he know that it is creative of all other righteous-
ness toward equal and inferior lives : he cannot
know that it is not merely the beginning of right-
eousness, but the germ of life, the active potency
whence life-righteousness grows. It is not like
some single separate act of righteousness ; it is the
action of the whole man, turning to good from evil
— turning his back on all that is opposed to
righteousness, and starting on a road on which he
cannot stop, in which he must go on growing more

Righteousness 2 1 7

and more righteous, discovering more and more
what righteousness is, and more and more what is
unrighteous in himself. In tlieoneact of beheving
in God — that is, of giving himself to do what he
tells him — he abjures evil, both what he knows and
what he does not yet know in himself. A man
may indeed have turned to obey God, and yet be
capable of many an injustice to his neighbour
which he has not yet discovered to be an injustice ;
but as he goes on obeying, he will go on discover-
ing. Not only will he grow more and more deter-
mined to be just, but he will grow more and more
sensitive to the idea of injustice — I do not mean
in others, but in himself A man who continues
capable of a known injustice to his neighbour, can-
not be believed to have turned to God. At all
events, a man cannot be near God, so as to be
learning what is just toward God, and not be near
his neighbour, so as to be learning what is unfair
to him ; for his will, which is the man, lays hold of
righteousness, chooses to be righteous. If a man
is to be blamed for not choosing righteousness, for
not turning to the light, for not coming out of the
darkness, then the man who does choose and turn
and come out, is to be justified in his deed, and

2 1 8 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

declared to be righteous." He is not yet thoroughly
righteous, but is growing in and toward righteous-
ness. He needs creative God, and time for will
and effort. Not yet quite righteous, he cannot
yet act quite righteously, for only the man in
whom the image of God is perfected can live
perfectly. Born into the world without righteous-
ness, he cannot see, he cannot know,, he is not in
touch with perfect righteousness, and it would be
the deepest injustice to demand of him, with a
penalty, at any given moment, more than he knows
how to yield ; but it is the highest love constantly
to demand of him perfect righteousness as what
he must attain to. With what life and possibility
is in him, he must keep turning to righteousness
and abjuring iniquity, ever aiming at the perfection
of God. Such an obedient faith is most justly and
fairly, being all that God himself can require of the
man, called by God righteousness in the man. It
would not be enough for the righteousness of God,
or Jesus, or any perfected saint, because they are
capable of perfect righteousness, and, knowing
w^hat is perfect righteousness, choose to be perfectly
righteous ; but, in virtue of the life and growth in
it, it is enough at a given moment for the disciple

RioJiteoiisness 2 1 9

of the Perfect. The righteousness of Abraham
was not to compare with the righteousness of Paul.
He did not fight with himself for righteousness, as
did Paul — not because he was better than Paul
and therefore did not need to fight, but because
his idea of what was required of him was not with-
in sight of that of Paul ; yet was he righteous in
the same way as Paul was righteous : he had begun
to be righteous, and God called his righteousness
righteousness, for faith is righteousness. His faith
was an act recognizing God as his law, and that is
not a partial act, but an all-embracing and all-
determining action. A single righteous deed to-
ward one's fellow could hardly be imputed to a
man as righteousness. A man who is not trying
after righteousness may yet do many a righteous
act : they will not be forgotten to him, neither will
they be imputed to him as righteousness. Abraham's
action of obedient faith was righteousness none the
less that his righteousness was far behind Paul's.
Abraham started at the beginning of the long,
slow, disappointing preparation of the Jewish
people ; Paul started at its close, with the story
of Jesus behind him. Both believed, obeying
God, and therefore both were righteous. They

2 20 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

were righteous because they gave themselves up to
God to make them righteous ; and not to call such
men righteous, not to impute their faith to them
for righteousness, would be unjust. But God is
utterly just, and nowise resembles a legal-minded
Roman emperor, or a bad pope formulating the
doctrine of vicarious sacrifice.

What, then, is the righteousness which is of God
by faith ? It is simply the thing that God wants
every man to be, wrought out in him by constant
obedient contact with God himself It is not an
attribute either of God or man, but a fact of cha-
racter in God and in man. It is God's righteous-
ness wrought out in us, so that as he is righteous
we too are righteous. It does not consist in
obeying this or that law ; not even the keeping of
every law, so that no hair's-breadth did we run
counter to one of them, would be righteousness.
To be righteous is to be such a heart, soul, mind,
and will, as, without regard to law, would recoil
with horror from the lightest possible breach of any
law. It is to be so in love with what is fair and
right as to make it impossible for a man to do any-
thing that is less than absolutely righteous. It is
not the love of righteousness in the abstract that

RigJdeousness 2 2 1

makes anyone righteous, but such a love of fairplay
toward everyone with whom we come into contact,
that anything less than the fulfilling, with a clear
joy, of our divine relation to him or her, is impos-
sible. For the righteousness of God goes far
beyond mere deeds, and requires of us love and
helping mercy as our highest obligation and justice
to our fellow men — those of them too who have
done nothing for us, those even who have done us
wrong. Our relations with others, God first and
then our neighbour in order and degree, must one
day become, as in true nature they are, the glad-
ness of our being ; and nothing then will ever
appear good for us, that is not in harmony with
those blessed relations. Every thought will not
merely be just, but will be just because it is some-
thing more, because it is live and true. What
heart in the kingdom of heaven would ever dream
of constructing a metaphysical system of what we
owed to God and why we owed it ? The light of
our life, our sole, eternal, and infinite joy, is simply
God — God — God — nothing but God, and all his
creatures in him. He is all and in all, and the
children of the kingdom know it. He includes all
things ; not to be true to anything he has made is

222 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

to be untrue to him. God is truth, is life ; to be
in God is to know him and need no law. Exist-
ence will be eternal Godness.

You would not like that way of it ? There is,
there can be, no other ; but before you can judge
of it, you must know at least a little of God as he
is, not as you imagine him. I say as you imagine
him, because it cannot be that any creature should
know him as he is and not desire him. In pro-
portion as we know him we must desire him, until
at length we live in and for him with all our con-
scious heart. That is why the Jews did not like
the Lord : he cared so simply for his father's will,
and not for anything they called his will.

The righteousness which is of God by faith in
the source, the prime of that righteousness, is then
just the same kind of thing as God's righteousness,
, differing only as the created differs from the
creating. The righteousness of him who does the
will of his father in heaven, is the righteousness of
Jesus Christ, is God's own righteousness. The
righteousness which is of God by faith in God, is
God's righteousness. The man who has this
righteousness, thinks about things as God thinks
about thena, loves the things that God loves, cares

Rizhteous7iess 2 2

for nothing that God does not care about. Even
while this righteousness is being born in him, the
man will say to himself, ' Why should I be troubled
about this thing or that ? Docs God care about
it ? No. Then why should I care ? I must not
care. I will not care ! ' If he does not know
whether God cares about it or not, he will say, ' If
God cares I should have my desire, he will give it
me ; if he does not care I should have it, neither
will I care. In the meantime I will do my work.'
The man with God's righteousness does not love a
thing merely because it is right, but loves the very
Tightness in it. He not only loves a thought, but
he loves the man in his thinking that thought ; he
loves the thought alive in the man. He does not
take his joy from himself He feels joy in him-
self, but it comes to him from others, not from
himself — from God first, and from somebody, any-
body, everybody next. He would rather, in the
fulness of his content, pass out of being, rather
himself cease to exist, than that another should.
He could do without knowing himself, but he could
not know himself and spare one of the brothers or
sisters God had given him. The man who really
knows God, is, and always will be, content with

2 24 Unspoken Servions : Third Series

what God, who is the very self of his self, shall
choose for him ; he is entirely God's, and not at
all his own. His consciousness of himself is the
reflex from those about him, not the result of his
own turning in of his regard upon himself It is
not the contemplation of what God has made him,
it is the being what God has made him, and the
contemplation of what God himself is, and what he
has made his fellows, that gives him his joy. He
wants nothing, and feels that he has all things, for
he is in the bosom of his father, and the thoughts
of his father come to him. He knows that if he
needs anything, it is his before he asks it ; for his
father has willed him, in the might and truth of
his fatherhood, to be one with himself.

This then, or something like this, for words are
poor to tell the best things, is the righteousness
which is of God by faith — so far from being a
thing built on the rubbish heap of legal fiction
called vicarious sacrifice, or its shadow called
imputed righteousness, that only the child with the
child-heart, so far ahead of and so different from
the wise and prudent, can understand it. The
wise and prudent interprets God by himself, and
does not understand him ; the child interprets

Righteousness 225

God by himself, and does understand him. The
wise and prudent must make a system and arrange
things to his mind before he can say, / believe.
The child sees, believes, obeys — and knows he must
be perfect as his father in heaven is perfect. If an
angel, seeming to come from heaven, told him that
God had let him off, that he did not require so
much of him as that, but would be content with
less ; that he could not indeed allow him to be
wicked, but would pass by a great deal, modifying
his demands because it was so hard for him to be
quite good, and he loved him so dearly, the child
of God would at once recognize, woven with the
angel's starry brilliancy, the flicker of the flames
of hell, and would say to the shining one, ' Get
thee behind me, Satan.' Nor would there be the
slightest wonder or merit in his doing so, for at the
words of the deceiver, if but for briefest moment
imagined true, the shadow of a rising hell would
gloom over the face of creation ; hope would
vanish ; the eternal would be as the carcase of a
dead man ; the glory would die out of the face of
God — until the groan of a thunderous no burst from
the caverns of the universe, and the truth, flashing
on his child's soul from the heart of the Eternal,
III. Q

2 26 U^tspoken Sermons : Third Series

Immortal, Invisible, withered up the lie of the
messenger of darkness.

' But how can God bring this about in me ? '
Let him do it, and perhaps you will know ; if
you never know, yet there it will be. Help him to do
it, or he cannot do it. He originates the possibility
of your being his son, his daughter ; he makes you
able to will it, but you must will it. If he is not
doing it in you — that is, if you have as yet pre-
vented him from beginning, why should I tell you,
even if I knew the process, how he would do what
you will not let him do ? Why should you know ?
What claim have you to know ? But indeed how
should you be able to know ? For it must deal
with deeper and higher things than you can know
anything of till the work is at least begun. Perhaps
if you approved of the plans of the glad creator,
you would allow him to make of you something
divine ! To teach your intellect what has to be
learned by your whole being, what cannot be un-
derstood without the whole being, what it would
do you no good to understand save you understood
it in your whole being — if this be the province of
any man, it is not mine. Let the dead bury their
dead, and the dead teach their dead ; for me, I will

Righteotisness 227

try to wake them. To those who are awake, I
cry, ' For the sake of your father and the first-born
among many brethren to whom we belong, for the
sake of those he has given us to love the most
dearly, let patience have her perfect work. Statue
under the chisel of the sculptor, stand steady to
the blows of his mallet. Clay on the wheel, let the
fingers of the divine potter model you at their will.
Obey the Father's lightest word ; hear the Brother
who knows you, and died for you ; beat down
your sin, and trample it to death.

Brother, when thou sittest at home in thy
house, which is the temple of the Lord, open all
thy windows to breathe the air of his approach ;
set the watcher on thy turret, that he may listen
out into the dark for the sound of his coming,
and thy hand be on the latch to open the door at
his first knock. Shouldst thou open the door and
not see him, do not say he did not knock, but under-
stand that he is there, and wants thee to go out to
him. It may be he has something for thee to do
for him. Go and do it, and perhaps thou wilt return
with a new prayer, to find a new window in thy soul.
Never wait for fitter time or place to talk to
him. To wait till thou go to church, or to thy

Q 2

2 28 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

closet, is to make him wait. He will listen as thou
walkest in the lane or the crowded street, on the
common or in the place of shining concourse.

Remember, if indeed thou art able to know
it, that not in any church is the service done that
he requires. He will say to no man, ' You never
went to church : depart from me ; I do not know
you ; ' but, * Inasmuch as you never helped one of
my father's children, you have done nothing for
me.' Church or chapel is not the place for divine
service. It is a place of prayer, a place of praise, a
place to feed upon good things, a place to learn of
God, as what place is not ? It is a place to look in
the eyes of your neighbour, and love God along with
him. But the world in which you move, the place
of your living and loving and labour, not the church
you go to on your holiday, is the place of divine
service. Serve your neighbour, and you serve him.

Do not heed much if men mock you and
speak lies of you, or in goodwill defend you un-
worthily. Heed not much if even the righteous
turn their backs upon you. Only take heed that
you turn not from them. Take courage in the fact
that there is nothing covered, that shall not be re-
vealed; and hid, that shall not be known.

229

THE FINAL UNMASKING.

For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed ; and
hid, that shall not be known. — Matthew x. 26 ; Luke xii. 2.

God is not a God that hides, but a God that re-
veals. His whole work in relation to the creatures
he has made — and where else can lie his work ? —
is revelation — the giving them truth, the showing
of himself to them, that they may know him, and
come nearer and nearer to him, and so he have his
children more and more of companions to him.
That we are in the dark about anything is never
because he hides it, but because we are not yet
such that he is able to reveal that thing to us.

That God could not do the thing at once which
he takes time to do, we may surely say without
irreverence. His will cannot finally be thwarted ;
where it is thwarted for a time, the very thwarting
subserves the working out of a higher part of his
will. He gave man the power to thwart his will,

230 Unspoken Serinons : Third Series

that, by means of that same power, he might come
at last to do his will in a higher kind and way than
would otherwise have been possible to him. God
sacrifices his will to man that man may become
such as himself, and give all to the truth ; he makes
man able to do wrong, that he may choose and
love righteousness.

The fact that all things are slowly coming into
the light of the knowledge of men — so far as this
may be possible to the created — is used in three
different ways by the Lord, as reported by his
evangelists. In one case, with which we will not
now occupy ourselves — Mark iv. 22 ; Luke viii. 16
— he uses it to enforce the duty of those who
have received light to let it shine : they must do
their part to bring all things out. In Luke xii. 2,
is recorded how he brought it to bear on hypocrisy,
showing its uselessness ; and, in the case recorded in
Matthezv x. 25, he uses the fact to enforce fearless-
ness as to the misinterpretation of our words and
actions.

In whatever mode the Lord may intend that
it shall be wrought out, he gives us to understand,
as an unalterable principle in the government of
the universe, that all such things as the unrighteous

The Final Unmasking 231

desire to conceal, and such things as it is a pain to
the righteous to have concealed, shall come out into
the light.

' Beware of hypocrisy,' the Lord says, ' for
there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed,
neither hid, that shall not be known.' What is
hypocrisy? The desire to look better than you
are ; the hiding of things you do, because you would
not be supposed to do them, because you would be
ashamed to have them known where you are known.
The doing of them is foul ; the hiding of them, in
order to appear better than you are, is fouler still.
The man who does not live in his own consciousness
as in the open heavens, is a hypocrite — and for
most of us the question is, are we growing less or
more of such hypocrites ? Are we ashamed of
not having been open and clear? Are we fighting
the evil thing which is our temptation to hypocrisy ?
The Lord has not a thought in him to be ashamed
of before God and his universe, and he will not be
content until he has us in the same liberty. For
our encouragement to fight on, he tells us that those
that hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be
filled, that they shall become as righteous as the

232 Unspoken Ser77i07ts : Third Sejnes

spirit of the Father and the Son in them can make
them desire.

The Lord says also, ' If they have called the
master of the house Beelzebub, how much more
shall they call them of his household ! Fear them
not therefore : for there is nothing covered, that
shall not be revealed ; and hid, that shall not be
known.' To a man who loves righteousness and his
fellow men, it must always be painful to be mis-
understood ; and misunderstanding is specially in-
evitable where he acts upon principles beyond the
recognition of those around him, who, being but
half-hearted Christians, count themselves the law-
givers of righteousness, and charge him with the
very things it is the aim of his life to destroy. The
Lord himself was accused of being a drunkard and
a keeper of bad company— and perhaps would in
the present day be so regarded by not a few calling
themselves by his name, and teaching temperance
and virtue. He lived upon a higher spiritual
platform than they understand, acted from a height
of the virtues they would inculcate, loftier than
their eyes can scale. His Himalays are not visible
from their sand-heaps. The Lord bore with their
evil tongues, and was neither dismayed nor troubled ;

The Final Unmasking 233

but from this experience of his own, comforts those
who, being his messengers, must fare as he. 'If
they have called the master of the house Beelzebub,
how much more shall they call them of his house-
hold ! ' — * If they insult a man, how much more will
they not insult his servants ! ' While men count
themselves Christians on any other ground than
that they are slaves of Jesus Christ, the children of
God, and free from themselves, so long will they
use the servants of the Master despitefully. ' Do
not hesitate,' says the Lord, 'to speak the truth
that is in you ; never mind what they call you ;
proclaim from the housetop ; fear nobody.'

He spoke the words to the men to whom he
looked first to spread the news of the kingdom of
heaven ; but they apply to all who obey him.
Few who have endeavoured to do their duty, have
not been annoyed, disappointed, enraged perhaps,
by the antagonism, misunderstanding, and false
representation to which they have been subjected
therein — issuing mainly from those and the friends
of those who have benefited by their efforts to be
neighbours to all. The tales of heartlessness and
ingratitude one must come across, compel one to
see more and more clearly that humanity, without

234 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

willed effort after righteousness, is mean enough to
sink to any depth of disgrace. The judgments
also of imagined superiority are hard to bear.
The rich man who will screw his workmen to the
lowest penny, will read his poor relation a solemn
lecture on extravagance, because of some humblest
little act of generosity ! He takes the end of the
beam sticking out of his eye to pick the mote from
the eye of his brother withal ! If, in the endeavour
to lead a truer life, a man merely lives otherwise
than his neighbours, strange motives will be in-
vented to account for it. To the honest soul it is
a comfort to believe that the truth will one day be
known, that it will cease to be supposed that he
was and did as dull heads and hearts reported of
him. Still more satisfactory will be the unveiling
where a man is misunderstood by those who ought
to know him better — who, not even understanding
the point at issue, take it for granted he is about
to do the wrong thing, while he is crying for courage
to heed neither himself nor his friends, but only the
Lord. How many hear and accept the words,
' Be not conformed to this world,' without once
perceiving that what they call Society and bow to
as supreme, is the World and nothing else, or

The Final Unmasking 235

that those who mind what people think, and what
people will say, are conformed to — that is, take the
shape of — the world. The true man feels he has
nothing to do with Society as judge or lawgiver :
he is under the law of Jesus Christ, and it sets him
free from the law of the World. Let a man do
right, nor trouble himself about worthless opinion ;
the less he heeds tongues, the less difficult will he
find it to love men. Let him comfort himself with
the thought that the truth must out. He will not
have to pass through eternity with the brand of
ignorant or malicious judgment upon him. He
shall find his peers and be judged of them.

But, thou who lookest for the justification of the
light, art thou verily prepared for thyself to en-
counter such exposure as the general unveiling of
things must bring ? Art thou willing for the truth
whatever it be ? I nowise mean to ask, Have you
a conscience so void of offence, have you a heart
so pure and clean, that you fear no fullest exposure
of what is in you to the gaze of men and angels ?
— as to God, he knows it all now ! What I mean to
ask is. Do you so love the truth and the right, that
you welcome, or at least submit willingly to the
idea of an exposure of what in you is yet unknown

236 Uitspoken Semions : Third Series

to yourself— an exposure that may redound to the
glory of the truth by making you ashamed and
humble ? It may be, for instance, that you were
wrong in regard to those, for the righting of whose
wrongs to you, the great judgment of God is now
by you waited for with desire : will you welcome
any discovery, even if it work for the excuse of
others, that will make you more true, by revealing
what in you was false ? Are you willing to be
made glad that you were wrong when you thought
others were wrong? If you can with such sub-
mission face the revelation of things hid, then you
are of the truth, and need not be afraid ; for, what-
ever comes, it will and can only make you more
true and humble and pure.

Does the Lord mean that everything a man
has ever done or thought must be laid bare to the
universe ?

So far, I think, as is necessary to the under-
standing of the man by those who have known, or
are concerned to know him. For the time to come,
and for those who are yet to know him, the man
will henceforth, if he is a true man, be transparent
to all that are capable of reading him. A man may
not then, any more than now, be intelligible to

The Final Unmasking 237

those beneath him, but all things will be working
toward revelation, nothing toward concealment or
misunderstanding. Who in the kingdom will de-
sire concealment, or be willing to misunderstand ?
Concealment is darkness ; misunderstanding is a
fog. A man will hold the door open for anyone to
walk into his house, for it is a temple of the living
God — with some things worth looking at, and no-
thing to hide. The glory of the true world is, that
there is nothing in it that needs to be covered,
while ever and ever there will be things uncovered.
Every man's light will shine for the good and glory
of his neighbour.

' Will all my weaknesses, all my evil habits, all
my pettinesses, all the wrong thoughts which I
cannot help — will all be set out before the un -
verse ? '

Yes, if they so prevail as to constitute your
character — that is, if they are you. But if you have
come out of the darkness, if you are fighting it, if
you are honestly trying to walk in the light, you
may hope in God your father that what he has
cured, what he is curing, what he has forgiven,
will be heard of no more, not now being a con-
stituent part of you. Or if indeed some of your

238 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

evil things must yet be seen, the truth of them will
be seen — that they are things you are at strife
with, not things you are cherishing and brooding
over. God will be fair to you— so fair ! — fair with
the fairness of a father loving his own — who will
have you clean, who will neither spare you any
needful shame, nor leave you exposed to any that
is not needful. The thing we have risen above,
is dead and forgotten, or if remembered, there is
God to comfort us. ' If any man sin, we have a
comforter with the Father.' We may trust God
with our past as heartily as with our future. It
will not hurt us so long as we do not try to hide
things, so long as we are ready to bow our heads
in hearty shame where it is fit we should be
ashamed. For to be ashamed is a holy and blessed
thing. Shame is a thing to shame only those who
want to appear, not those who want to be. Shame is
to shame those who want to pass their examination,
not those who would get into the heart of things.
In the name of God let us henceforth have nothing
to be ashamed of, and be ready to meet any shame
on its way to meet us. For to be humbly ashamed
is to be plunged in the cleansing bath of the truth.
As to the revelation of the ways of God, I need

The Final Unmasking 239

not speak ; he has been ahvays, from the first, re-
veahng them to his prophet, to his child, and will
go on doing so for ever. But let me say a word
about another kind of revelation — that of their own
evil to the evil.

The only terrible, or at least the supremely ter-
rible revelation is that of a man to himself What a
horror will it not be to a vile man — more than all
to a man whose pleasure has been enhanced by the
suffering of others — a man that knew himself such
as men of ordinary morals would turn from with
disgust, but who has hitherto had no insight into
what he is — what a horror will it not be to him
when his eyes are opened to see himself as the pure
see him, as God sees him ! Imagine such a man
waking all at once, not only to see the eyes of the
universe fixed upon him with loathing astonish-
ment, but to see himself at the same moment as
those eyes see him ! What a waking ! — into the full
blaze of fact and consciousness, of truth and viola-
tion !

To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself !

Or think what it must be for a man counting
himself religious, orthodox, exemplary, to perceive

240 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

suddenly that there was no religion in him, only
love of self ; no love of the right, only a great love
of being in the right ! What a discovery — that he
was simply a hypocrite — one w"ho loved to appeal^
and ivas not ! The rich seem to be those among
whom will occur hereafter the sharpest reverses, if I
understand aright the parable of the rich man and
Lazarus. Who has not known the insolence of
their meanness toward the poor, all the time count-
ing themselves of the very elect ! What riches
and fancied religion, with the self-sufficiency
they generate between them, can make man or
woman capable of, is appalling. Mammon, the
most contemptible of deities, is the most wor-
shipped, both outside and in the house of God : to
many of the religious rich in that day, the great
damning revelation will be their behaviour to
the poor to whom they thought themselves very
kind. * He flattereth himself in his own eyes
until his iniquity is found to be hateful.' A
man may loathe a thing in the abstract for
years, and find at last that all the time he has
been, in his own person, guilty of it. To carry a
thing under our cloak caressingly, hides from us
its identity with something that stands before

The Final Unmasking 241

us on the puolic pillory. Many a man might read
this and assent to it, who cages in his own bosom
a carrion-bird that he never knows for what it is,
because there are points of difference in its
plumage from, that of the bird he calls by an ugly
name.

Of all who will one day stand in dismay and
sickness of heart, with the consciousness that their
very existence is a shame, those will fare the
worst who have been consciously false to their
fellows ; who, pretending friendship, have used
their neighbour to their own ends ; and especially
those who, pretending friendship, have divided
friends. To such Dante has given the lowest hell.
If there be one thing God hates, it must be
treachery. Do not imagine Judas the only man of
whom the Lord would say, ' Better were it for that
man if he had never been born ! ' Did the Lord
speak out of personal indignation, or did he utter a
spiritual fact, a live principle ? Did he speak in
anger at the treachery of his apostle to himself,
or in pity for the man that had better not have
been born? Did the word spring from his know-
ledge of some fearful punishment awaiting Judas,
or from his sense of the horror it was to be such a

III. R

242 Unspoken Sermons : Tlui^d Series

man ? Beyond all things pitiful is it that a man
should carry about with him the consciousness of
being such a person — should know himself and not
another that false one ! ' O God,' we think, ' how
terrible if it were I ! ' Just so terrible is it that it
should be Judas ! And have I not done things
with the same germ in them, a germ which, brought
to its evil perfection, would have shown itself the
canker-worm, treachery ? Except I love my neigh-
bour as myself, I may one day betray him ! Let
us therefore be compassionate and humble, and
hope for every man.

A man may sink by such slow degrees that,
long after he is a devil, he may go on being a good
churchman or a good dissenter, and thinking him-
self a good Christian. Continuously repeated sin
against the poorest consciousness of evil must have
a dread rousing. There are men who never wake
to know how wicked they are, till, lo, the gaze of
the multitude is upon them !— the multitude staring
with self-righteous eyes, doing like things them-
selves, but not yet found out ; sinning after another
pattern, therefore the hardest judges, thinking by
condemnation to escape judgment. But there
is nothing covered that shall not be revealed.

The Final Unmasking 243

What if the only thing to Avake the treacherous,
money-loving thief, Judas, to a knowledge of him-
self, was to let the thing go on to the end, and his
kiss betray the Master? Judas did not hate the
Master when he kissed him, but not being a true
man, his very love betrayed him.

The good man, conscious of his own evil, and
desiring no refuge but the purifying light, will
chiefly rejoice that the exposure of evil makes
for the victory of the truth, the kingdom of God
and his Christ. He sees in the unmasking of the
hypocrite, in the unveiling of the covered, in the
exposure of the hidden, God's interference, for him
and all the race, between them and the lie.

The only triumph the truth can ever have
is its recognition by the heart of the liar. Its
victory is in the man who, not content with
saying, ' I was blind and now I see,' cries out,
' Lord God, just and true, let me perish, but
endure thou ! Let me live because thou livest,
because thou savest me from the death in myself,
the untruth I have nourished in me, and even
called righteousness ! Hallowed be thy name, for
thou only art true ; thou only lovest ; thou only
art holy, for thou only art humble ! Thou only

244 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

art unselfish ; thou only hast never sought thine
own, but the things of thy children ! Yea, O
father, be thou true, and every man a liar ! '

There is no satisfaction of revenge possible to
the injured. The severest punishment that can be
inflicted upon the wrong-doer is simply to let him
know what he is ; for his nature is of God, and the
deepest in him is the divine. Neither can any
other punishment than the sinner's being made to
see the enormity of his injury, give satisfaction to
the injured. While the wronger will admit no
wrong, while he mocks at the idea of amends, or
while, admitting the wrong, he rejoices in having
done it, no suffering could satisfy revenge, far less
justice. Both would continually know themselves
foiled. Therefore, while a satisfied justice is an un-
avoidable eternal event, a satisfied revenge is an
eternal impossibility. For the moment that the sole
adequate punishment, a vision of himself, begins
to take true effect upon the sinner, that moment
the sinner has begun to grow a righteous man,
and the brother human whom he has offended
has no choice, has nothing left him but to take
the offender to his bosom — the more tenderly
that his brother is a repentant brother, that he was

The Final Unmasking 245

dead and is alive again, that he was lost and is
found. Behold the meeting of the divine extremes
— the extreme of punishment, the embrace of
heaven ! They run together ; ' the wheel is come
full circle.' For, I venture to think, there can be
no such agony for created soul, as to see itself vile
— vile by its own action and choice. Also I ven-
ture to think there can be no delight for created
soul — short, that is, of being one with the Father —
so deep as that of seeing the heaven of forgiveness
open, and disclose the shining stair that leads to
its own natural home, where the eternal Father
has been all the time awaiting this return of his
child.

So, friends, however indignant we may be, how-
ever intensely and however justly we may feel our
wrongs, there is no revenge possible for us in
the universe of the Father. I may say to myself
with heartiest vengeance, ' I should just like to let
that man see what a wretch he is — what all honest
men at this moment think of him ! ' but, the moment
come, the man will loathe himself tenfold more
than any other man could, and that moment my
heart will bury his sin. Its own ocean of pity
will rush from the divine depths of its God-origin

246 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

to overwhelm it. Let us try to forethink, to
antedate our forgiveness. Dares any man suppose
that Jesus would have him hate the traitor through
whom he came to the cross ? Has he been pleased
through all these ages with the manner in which
those calling themselves by his name have
treated, and are still treating his nation ? We
have not yet sounded the depths of forgiveness
that are and will be required of such as would be
his disciples !

Our friends will know us then : for their joy,
will it be, or their sorrow? Will their hearts sink
within them when they look on the real likeness
of us ? Or will they rejoice to find that we were
not so much to be blamed as they thought, in this
thing or that which gave them trouble ?

Let us remember, however, that not evil only
will be unveiled ; that many a masking miscon-
ception will uncover a face radiant with the loveli-
ness of the truth. And whatever disappointments
may fall, there is consolation for every true heart
in the one sufficing joy — that it stands on the
border of the kingdom, about to enter into ever
fuller, ever-growing possession of tJie inheritance of
the saints in li<rht.

!47

THE INHERITANCE.

Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to
be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. — Ep. to the
Colossians i. 12.

To have a share in any earthly inheritance, is to
diminish the share of the other inheritors. In the
inheritance of the saints, that which each has,
goes to increase the possession of the rest. Hear
what Dante puts in the mouth of his guide, as they
pass through Purgatory : —

Perche s' appuntano i vostri desiri
Dove per compagnia parte si scema,
Invidia muove il mantaco a' sospiri.

Ma se r amor della spera suprema
Torcesse 'n suso '1 desiderio vostro,
Non vi sarebbe al petto quella tenia ;

Che per quanto si dice piu li nostro,
Tanto possiede piu di ben ciascuno,
E piu di caritade arde in quel chiostro.

Because you point and fix your longing eyes
On things where sharing lessens every share,

248 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

The human bellows heave with envious sighs.

But if the loftiest love that dwelleth there
Up to the heaven of heavens your longing turn,
Then from your heart will pass this fearing care:

The oftener there the word our they discern,
The more of good doth everyone possess,
The more of love doth in that cloister burn.

Dante desires to know how it can be that a dis-
tributed good should make the receivers the richer
the more of them there are ; and Virgil answers —

Perocche tu rificchi

La mente pure alle cose terrene,

Di vera luce tenebre dispicchi.
Quello 'nfinito ed ineffabil bene,

Che lassu e, cosi corre ad amore.

Com' a lucido corpo raggio viene.
Tanto si da, quanto truova d' ardore :

Si che quantunque carita si stende,

Cresce sovr' essa 1' eterno valore.
E quanta gente piu lassu s' intende,

Pill v' e da bene amare, e piu vi s' ama,

E come specchio, 1' uno all' altro rende.

Because thy mind doth stick
To earthly things, and on them only brood.
From the true light thou dost but darkness pick.
That same ineffable and infinite Good,

The Inheritance 249

Which dwells up there, to Love doth run as fleet
As sunrays to bright things, for sisterhood.

It gives itself proportionate to the heat :

So that, wherever Love doth spread its reign,
The growing wealth of God makes that its seat.

And the more people that up thither strain,

The more there are to love, the more they love,
And like a mirror each doth give and gain.

In this inheritance then a man may desire and
endeavour to obtain his share without selfish pre-
judice to others ; nay, to fail of our share in it,
would be to deprive others of a portion of theirs.
Let us look a little nearer, and see in what the in-
heritance of the saints consists.

It might perhaps be to commit some small
logical violence on the terms of the passage to say
that ' the inheritance of the saints in light ' must
mean purely and only ' the possession of light
which is the inheritance of the saints.' At the
same time the phrase is literally * the inheritance
of the saints in the ligiit ; ' and this perhaps
makes it the more likely that, as I take it, Paul
had in his mind the light as itself the inheritance
of the saints — that he held the very substance
of the inheritance to be the light. And if we

250 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

remember that God is light ; also that the
highest prayer ot the Lord for his friends was that
they might be one in him and his father ; and re-
call what the apostle said to the Ephesians, that
' in him we live and move and have our being,' we
may be prepared to agree that, although he may
not mean to include all possible phases of the
inheritance of the saints in the one word light,
as I think he does, yet the idea is perfectly
consistent with his teaching. For the one only
thing to make existence a good, the one thing to
make it worth having, is just that there should be
no film of separation between our life and the life
of which ours is an outcome ; that we should not
only knozv that God is our life, but be aware,
in some grand consciousness beyond anything
imagination can present to us, of the pre-
sence of the making God, in the very process
of continuing us the live things he has made
us. This is only another way of saying that
the very inheritance upon which, as the twice-
born sons of our father, we have a claim — which
claim his sole desire for us is that we should, so to
say, enforce— that this inheritance is simply the
light, God himself, the Light. If you think of ten

The Inheritance

thousand things that are good and worth having,,
what is it that makes them good or worth having
but the God in them ? That the loveHness of the
world has its origin in the making will of God,
would not content me ; I say, the very loveliness of
it is the loveliness of God, for its loveliness is his
own lovely thought, and must be a revelation of
that which dwells and moves in himself Nor is
this all : my interest in its loveliness would vanish,
I should feel that the soul was out of it, if you
could persuade me that God had ceased to care for
the daisy, and now cared for something else instead.
The faces of some flowers lead me back to the
heart of God ; and, as his child, I hope I feel, in my
lowly degree, what he felt when, brooding over
them, he said, ' They are good ; ' that is, ' They are
what I mean.'

The thing I am reasoning toward is this : that, if
everything were thus seen in its derivation from
God, then the inheritance of the saints, whatever
the form of their possession, would be seen to be
light. All things are God's, not as being in his
power — that of course — but as coming from him.
The darkness itself becomes light around him when
we think that verily he hath created the darkness^

252 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

for there could have been no darkness but for the
light. Without God there would not even have
been nothing ; there would not have existed the
idea of nothing, any more than an\- reality of
nothing, but that he exists and called something
into being.

Nothingness owes its very name and nature to
the being and reality of God. There is no word to
represent that which is not God, no word for the
ichere without God in it ; for it is not, could not be.
So I think we may say that the inheritance of the
saints is the share each has in the Light.

But how can any share exist where all is open ?

The true share, in the heavenly kingdom
throughout, is not what you have to keep, but what
you have to give away. The thing that is mine is
the thing I have with the power to give it. The
thing I have no power to give a share in, is nowise
mine ; the thing I cannot share with everyone, can-
not be essentially my own. The cry of the thousand
splendours which Dante, in the fifth canto of the
' Paradiso,' tells us he saw gliding toward them in
the planet Mercury, was —

Ecco chi crescera li nostri amori !

Lo, here comes one who will increase our loves !

The Inherit mice 253

All the light is ours. God is all ours. Even
that in God which we cannot understand is ours.
If there were anything in God that was not ours,
then God would not be one God. I do not say we
must, or can ever know all in God ; not throughout
eternity shall we ever comprehend God, but he is
our father, and must think of us with every part of
him — so to speak in our poor speech ; he must
know us, and that in himself which we cannot
know, with the same thought, for he is one. We
and that which we do not or cannot know, come
together in his thought. And this helps us to see
how, claiming all things, we have yet shares. For
the infinitude of God can only begin and only go
on to be revealed, through his infinitely differing
creatures — all capable of wondering at, admiring,
and loving each other, and so bound all in one in
him, each to the others revealing him. For every
human being is like a facet cut in the great dia-
mond to which I may dare liken the father of him
who likens his kingdom to a pearl. Every man,
woman, child — for the incomplete also is his, and
in its very incompleteness reveals him as a pro-
gressive worker in his creation — is a revealer of
God. I have my message of my great Lord,

2 54 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

you have yours. Your dog, your horse tells you
about him who cares for all his creatures. None of
them came from his hands. Perhaps the precious
things of the earth, the coal and the diamonds, the
iron and clay and gold, may be said to have come
from his hands ; but the live things come from his
heart — from near the same region whence ourselves
we came. How much my horse may, in his own
fashion — that is, God's equine way — know of him, I
cannot tell, because he cannot tell. Also, we do
not know what the horses know, because they are
horses, and we are at best, in relation to them, only
horsemen. The ways of God go down into micro-
scopic depths, as well as up into telescopic heights
— and with more marvel, for there lie the begin-
nings of life : the immensities of stars and worlds
all exist for the sake of less things than they. So
with mind ; the ways of God go into the depths yet
unrevealed to us ; he knows his horses and dogs
as we cannot know them, because we are not yet
pure sons of God. When through our sonship, as
Paul teaches, the redemption of these lower brothers
and sisters shall have come, then we shall under-
stand each other better But now the lord of life
has to look on at the wilful torture of multitudes

The Inheritance 255

of his creatures. It must be that offences come, but
woe unto that man by whom they come ! The
Lord may seem not to heed, but he sees and knows.

I say, then, that every one of us is something
that the other is not, and therefore knows some-
thing— it may be without knowing that he knows
it — which no one else knows ; and that it is every
one's business, as one of the kingdom of hght, and
inheritor in it all, to give his portion to the rest ;
for we are one family, with God at the head and
the heart of it, and Jesus Christ, our elder brother,
teaching us of the Father, whom he only knows.

We may say, then, that whatever is the source
of joy or love, whatever is pure and strong, what-
ever wakes aspiration, whatever lifts us out of
selfishness, whatever is beautiful or admirable — in
a word, whatever is of the light — must make a part,
however small it may then prove to be in its pro-
portion, of the inheritance of the saints in the light ;
for, as in the epistle of James, ' Every good gift,
and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh
down from the Father of lights, with whom is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning.'

Children fear heaven, because of the dismal
notions the unchildlike give them of it, who, with-

256 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

out imagination, receive unquestioning what others,
as void of imagination as themselves, represent
concerning it. I do not see that one should care
to present an agreeable picture of it ; for, suppose
I could persuade a man that heaven was the
perfection of all he could desire around him, what
would the man or the truth gain by it ? If he knows
the Lord, he will not trouble himself about heaven ;
if he does not know him, he will not be drawn to
Jiim by it. I would not care to persuade the feeble
Christian that heaven was a place worth going to ;
I would rather persuade him that no spot in space,
no hour in eternity is worth anything to one who
remains such as he is. But would that none pre-
sumed to teach the little ones what they know
nothing of themselves ! What have not children
suffered from strong endeavour to desire the things
they could not love ! Well do I remember the
pain of the prospect — no, the trouble at not being
pleased with the prospect — of being made a pillar
in the house of God, and going no more out!
Those words were not spoken to the little ones.
Yet are they, literally taken, a blessed promise
compared with the notion of a continuous church-
going ! Perhaps no one teaches such a thing ; but

The Inheritance 257

somehow the children get the dreary fancy : there
are ways of involuntary teaching more potent than
words. What boy, however fain to be a disciple
of Christ and a child of God, would prefer a
sermon to his glorious kite, that divinest of toys,
with God himself for his playmate, in the blue wind
that tossed it hither and thither in the golden
void ! He might be ready to part with kite and
wind and sun, and go down to the grave for
his brothers — but surely not that they might be
admitted to an everlasting prayer-meeting ! For
my own part, I rejoice to think that there will be
neither church nor chapel in the high countries ;
yea, that there will be nothing there called religion,
and no law but the perfect law of liberty. For
how should there be law or religion where every
throb of the heart says God\ where every song-
throat is eager with thanksgiving ! where such a
tumult of glad waters is for ever bursting from
beneath the throne of God, the tears of the glad-
ness of the universe ! Religion ? Where will be
the room for it, when the essence of every thought
must be God ? Law ? What room will there be
for law, when everything upon which law could lay
a shalt not will be too loathsome to think of?
III. S

258 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

What room for honesty, where love fills full the law
to overflowing — where a man would rather drop
sheer into the abyss, than wrong his neighbour one
hair's-breadth ?

Heaven will be continuous touch with God.
The very sense of being will in itself be bliss. For
the sense of true life, there must be actual, conscious
contact with the source of the life ; therefore mere
life — in itself, in its very essence good — good as the
life of God which is our life— must be such bliss as,
I think, will need the mitigation of the loftiest joys
of communion with our blessed fellows ; the mitiga-
tion of art in every shape, and of all combinations
of arts ; the mitigation of countless services to the
incomplete, and hard toil for those who do not yet
know their neighbour or their Father. The bliss
of pure being will, I say, need these mitigations to
render the intensity of it endurable by heart and
brain.

To those who care only for things, and not for
the souls of them, for the truth, the reality of them,
the prospect of inheriting light can have nothing
attractive, and for their comfort — how false a com-
fort ! — they may rest assured there is no danger of
their being required to take up their inheritance at

The Inheritance

259

present. Perhaps they will be left to go on sucking
things dry, constantly missing the loveliness of
them, until they come at last to loathe the lovely
husks, turned to ugliness in their false imaginations.
Loving but the body of Truth, even here they
come to call it a lie, and break out in maudlin
moaning over the illusions of life. The soul of
Truth they have lost, because they never loved her.
What may they not have to pass through, what
purifying fires, before they can even behold her !

The notions of Christians, so called, concerning
the state into which they suppose their friends to
have entered, and which they speak of as a place of
blessedness, are yet such as to justify the bitterness
of their lamentation over them, and the heathenish
doubt whether they shall know them again. Verily
it were a wonder if they did ! After a year or two
of such a fate, they might well be unrecognizable !
One is almost ashamed of writing about such follies.
The nirvana is grandeur contrasted with their
heaven. The early Christians might now and then
plague Paul with a foolish question, the answer to
which plagues us to this day ; but was there ever
one of them doubted he w^as going to find his
friends again ? It is a mere form of Protean un-

26o Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

belief. They believe, they say, that God is love ;
but they cannot 'quite believe that he does not
make the love in which we are most like him, either
a mockery or a torture. Little would any promise
of heaven be to me if I might not hope to say,
' I am sorry ; forgive me ; let what I did in anger
or in coldness be nothing, in the name of God and
Jesus ! ' Many such words will pass, many a self-
humiliation have place. The man or woman who
is not ready to confess, who is not ready to pour
out a heartful of regrets — can such a one be an
inheritor of the light ? It is the joy of a true heart,
of an heir of light, of a child of that God who loves
an open soul — the joy of any man who hates the
wrong the more because he has done it, to say, ' I
was wrong ; I am sorry.' Oh, the sweet winds of
repentance and reconciliation and atonement, that
will blow from garden to garden of God, in the ten-
der twilights of his kingdom ! Whatever the place
be like, one thing is certain, that there will be end-
less, infinite atonement, ever-growing love. Certain
too it is that whatever the divinely human heart
desires, it shall not desire in vain. The light which
is God, and which is our inheritance because we are
the children of God, insures these things. For the

The Inheiatance 261

heart which desires is made thus to desire. God
is ; let the earth be glad, and the heaven, and the
heaven of heavens ! Whatever a father can do to
make his children blessed, that will God do for his
children. Let us, then, live in continual expectation,
looking for the good things that God will give to men,
being their father and their everlasting saviour.
If the things I have here come from him, and are
so plainly but a beginning, shall I not take them
as an earnest of the better to follow ? How else
can I regard them ? For never, in the midst of the
good things of this lovely world, have I felt quite at
home in it. Never has it shown me things lovely
or grand enough to satisfy me. It is not all I
should like for a place to live in. It may be that
my unsatisfaction comes from not having eyes
open enough, or keen enough, to see and under-
stand what he has given ; but it matters little
whether the cause lie in the world or in myself,
both being incomplete : God is, and all is well. All
that is needed to set the world right enough for me
— and no empyrean heaven could be right for me
without it — is, that I. care for God as he cares for
me ; that my will and desires keep time and har-
mony with his music ; that I have no thought that

2 62 Unspoken Sermons : Third Series

springs from myself apart from him ; that my in-
dividuality have the freedom that belongs to it as
born of his individuality, and be in no slavery to
my body, or my ancestry, or my prejudices, or any
impulse whatever from region unknown ; that I be
free by obedience to the law of my being, the live
and live-making will by which life is life, and my
life is myself What springs from myself and not
from God, is evil; it is a perversion of something
of God's. Whatever is not of faith is sin ; it is a
stream cut off — a stream that cuts itself off from its
source, and thinks to run on without it. But light
is my inheritance through him whose life is the
light of men, to wake in them the life of their
father in heaven. Loved be the Lord who in him-
self generated that life which is the light of men !

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Macfarren's Lectures on Harmony. Svo. 1 2s.

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Martin's Navigation and Nautical Astronomy. Royal Svo. ISs.
Meyer's Modern Theories of Chemistry. Svo. 18s.
Miller's Elements of Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical. 3 vols. Svo. Part I.

Chemical Physics, IGs. Part II. Inorganic Chemistry, 24s. Part III. Organio

Chemistry, price 31s. 6d.
Mitchell's Manual of Practical Assaying. Svo. 31s. Gd.

— Dissolution and Evolution ana the Science of Medicine. Svo. 16s.
Noble's Hours with a Throe-inch Telescope. Crown Svo. 4s. 6d.
Northcott's Lathes and Turning. Svo. 18s.
Oliver's Astronomy for Amateurs. Crown Svo. 7s. Gd.
Owen's Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the Vertebrate AnimaU.

3 vols. Svo. 73s. Gd.
Piessc's Art of Perfumery. Square crown Svo. 21s,

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General Lists of Works.

Richardson's The Health of Kations; Works and Life of Edwin Chadwick,C.B.
2 vols. 8vo. 28*.
— The Commonhealth ; a Series of Essays, Crown 8vo. Gs.

Schellen's Spectrum Analysis. 8vo. 31s. 6rf,
Scott's Weather Charts and Storm Warnings. Crown 8vo. 6*.
Sennett's Treatise on the Marine Steam Engine. 8vo. 21*.

Smith's G raphics, or the Art of Calculation by Drawing Lines. Four Parts. 8vo.
Stoney's The Theory of the Stresses on Girders, &o. Koyal 8vo. 3bi.
Tilden's Practical Chemistry. Pep. 8vo. U. 6d,
Tyndall'8 Paraday as a Discoverer. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.

— Floating Matter of the Air. Crown 8to. 7s. Gd.

— Fragments of Science. 2 vols, post 8vo. IGs.

— Heat a Mode of Motion. Crown 8vo. 12j.

— Lectures on Light deUvered in America. Crown 8vo. C».

— Lessons on Electricity. Crown 8vo. 2.s. Gd.

— Notes on Electrical Phenomena. Crown 8vo. Is. sewed, 1*. Gd. cloth,

— Notes of Lectures on Light. Crown 8vo. Is. sewed, Is. Gd. cloth.

— Eesearches on Diamagnetism and Magne-Crystalhc Action. Cr. Svo,

12i.

— Sound, with Frontispiece and 203 Woodcuts. Crown Svo. 16s. Gd.
Unwin's The Testing of Materials of Construction. lUustrated. Svo. 21j.
Watts' Dictionary of Chemistry. New Edition (4 vols.). Vol. 1, Svo. 42j,
Webb's Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes. Crown Svo. Ss.

NATURAL HISTORY, BOTANY 8c GARDENING.

Bennett and Murray's Handbook of Cryptogamic Botany. Svo,
Dixon's Rural Bird Life. Crown Svo. Illustrations, 5s.
Hartwig's Aerial World, Svo. 10*. Gd.

— Polar World, Svo. 10*. Gd.

— Sea and its Living Wonders. Svo. 10*, Gd,

— Subterranean World, Svo. 10*. Gd.

— Tropical World, Svo. 10*. Gd.
Llndley's Treasury of Botany. 2 vols. fcp. Svo. 12*.
Loudon's Encycloptedia of Gardening. Svo. 21*,

— — Plants. Svo. 42*.
Eivers's Orchard House. Crown Svo. 5*.

— Miniature Fruit Garden. Pep. Svo. is.
Stanley's Familiar History of British Birds. Crown Svo. 6»,
Wood's Bible Anmials. V/ith 112 Vignettes. Svo. 10*. 6(Z.

— Homes Without Hands, Svo. 10*. Gd.

— Insects Abroad, Svo. 10*. 6a!.

— Horse and Man. Svo. 14*.

— Insects at Home. With 700 Illustrations, Svo, 10*. Gd.

— Out of Doors. Crown Svo . 5*,

— Petland Revisited, Crown Svo, 7*. Gd,

— Strange Dwellings, Crown Svo. 5*. Popular Edition, 4to. Gd.

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10 General Lists of "Works.

THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS WORKS.

Arnold's (Rev. Dr. Thomas) Sermons. 6 vols, crown 8vo. 5s. each.

Boultbee's Commentary on the 39 Ai-ticles. Crown 8vo. 6*.

Browne's (Bishop) Exposition of the 39 Articles. 8vo. 16*.

BuUinger'a Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New

Testament. Royal 8vo. 15s.
Colenso on the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua. Crown 8vo, 6*.
Condor's Handbook of the Bible. Post 8vo, 7*. Qd.
Couybeare & Howson's Lite and Letters of St. Paul :—

Library Edition, with Maps, Plates, and Woodcuts. 2 vols, square crown
8vo. 21s.

Student's Edition, revised and condensed, with 46 Illustrations and Maps.
1 vol. crown 8vo. 6*.
Davidson's Introduction to the Study of the New Testament. 2 vols. 8vo. 30*.
Edersheim's Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. 2 vols. 8vo. 24».

— Prophecy and History in relation to the Messiah. 8vo. 12i.
ElUcott's (Bishop) Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles. 8vo. Corinthians 1. 16i.

Ualatians, Hs. 6rf. Ephesians, Ss. 6d. Pastoral Epistles,
10s. 6d. Philippians, Colossians and Philemon, lOs. 6d.
Thessaloniaus, 7s. 6d.
— — Lectures on the Life of our Lord. 8vo. 12*.

Ewald's Antiquities of Israel, translated by Solly. 8vo. 12s. 6d.

— History of Israel, translated by Carpenter & Smith. 8 vols. 8vo. Voli.

1 & 2, 243. Vols. 3 & 4, 214. Vol. 5, 18*. Vol. 6, 16*. Vol. 7, 21*.

Vol. 8, 18*.
Hobart's Medical Language of St. Luke. 8vo. 16*.
Hopkins's Christ the Consoler. Fcp. 8vo. 2*. 6d.
lliucbinson's The Record of a Human Soul. I'cp. Svo. 3*. GJ.
Jauieson's Sacred and Legendary Art. 6 vols, square 8vo.
Legends of the Madonna. 1 vol. 21*.

— — — Monastic Orders 1 vol. 21*.

— — — Saints and Martyrs. 2 vols. 31*. Gd.

— — — Saviour. Completed by Lady Bastlake. 2 vols. 42*.
Jukes's New Man and the Eternal Life. Crown 8vo. 6*.

— Second Death and the Restitution of all Things. Crown 8vo. 3*. 6d.

— Types of Genesis. Crown Svo. 7*. 6d.

— The Mystery of the Kingdom. Crown Svo. 3*. Gd.

— The Names of God in Holy Scripture. Crown Svo. 4*. Gd.
Lenormant's New Translation of the Book of Genesis. Translated into English.

Svo. lu*. bet,
Lyra Gennanica : Hymns translated by Miss Winkworth. Fcp. Svo. 5*.
Macdonald's (G.) Unspoken Sermons. Two Series. Crown Svo. 3*. Gd, each.

— The Miracles of our Lord. Crown Svo. 3*. Gd.

Manning's Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost. Crovm Svo. 8*. Gd.
Martineau's Endeavours after the Christian Life. Crown Svo. 7*. Gd.

— Hymns of Praise and Prayer. Crown Svo. 4*. Gd. 32mo. 1*. 6d.

— Sermons, Hours of Thought on Sacred Things. 2 vols. 7*. Gd. each.
Max Miiller's Origin and Growth of Religion. Crown Svo. 7*. Gd.

— — Science of Religion. Crown Svo. 7*. Gd.
Monsell's Spiritual Songs for Sundays and Holidays. Fcp. Svo. 5*. 18mo. 2j.

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General Lists of Works. 11

Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua. Crown 8vo. 6i.

— The Arians of the Fourth Century. Crown 8vo. 6s.

— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated. Crown 8vo. It,

— Historical Sketches. 3 vols, crown 8vo. Ss. each.

— Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects. Crown 8vo. 6*.

— An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Crown 8vo. 6a,

— Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Con-

sidered. Vol. 1, crown 8vo. 7*. 6d. Vol. 2, crown 8vo. 5s. 6d.

— The Via Media of the Anglican Church, Illustrated in Lectures, &o.

2 vols, crown 8vo. 6s. each.

— Essays, Critical and Historical. 2 vols, crown 8vo. 12^.

— Essays on Biblical and on Ecclesiastical Miracles. Crown 8vo. 6*.

— An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, 7*. 6d,

— Select Treatises of St. Athanasius in Controversy with the Arians.

Translated. 2 vols, cruwu bvo. 15s.
A'ewnham's Thy Heart with My Heart : Four Letters on the Holy Communion.

J8mo. 3a!. sewed ; 6d. cloth limp ; M. cloth.
Roberts' Greek the Language of Christ and His Apostles. 8vo. 18*.
Son of Man (The) in His Relation to the Race. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.
Supernatural Religion. Complete Edition. 3 vols. 8vo. 36*.
Twells' Colloquies on Preaching. Crown 8vo. 5s.

Younghusband's The Story of Our Lord told in Simple Language for Children.
Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. cloth plain ; 3s. 6d. clolh
extra, gilt edges.
— The fctory of Genesis. Crown 8vo. 2.s. Gd.

TRAVELS, ADVENTURES &.C.
Baker's Eight Years in Ceylon. Crown 8vo. 5s.

— Rifle and Hound in Ceylon. Crown bvo. 5s.
Brassey's Sunshine and Storm in the East. Library Edition, 8vo. 2ls. Cabinet
Edition, crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. Popular Ldition, 4to. 6d.

— Voyage in the ' Sunbeam.' Library Edition, 8 vo. 21s. Cabinet Edition,

crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. School Edition, tcp. 8vo. 2s. Popular Edition,
4to. 6d.

— In the Trades, the Tropics, and the ' Roarmg Forties." Cabinet Edition,

crown 8vo. 1/s. 6d. Popular Edition, 4to. 6d.

— Last Journals, 1886-7. Illustrated. 8vo. 21.s-.
Crawford's Reminiscences of Foreign Travel. Crown 8vo. 5s.

Firth's Our Kin Across the ,Sea. With Preface by J. A. Fronde. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.
Fronde's Oceana ; or, England and her Colonies. Cr. 8 vo. 2s. boards ; 2s. 6d. cloth.

— The English in the West Indies. Crown 8vo. 2s. boards ; 2s. 6d. cloth.
Howitt's Visits to RemarRable Places. Crown 8to. 6s.

James's The Long White Mountain ; or, a Journey in Manchuria. 8vo. 24s.
Lees and Clutterbuck's B.C. 1S87 : a Ramble in British Columbia. Cr. Svo. 10s. 6d.
Liudt's Picturesque New Guinea, 4to. 42s.
Pennell's Our Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Illustrated.

Crown Svo. 6s.
Riley's Athos ; or, The Mountain of the Monks. Svo. 21s.
Three in Norway. By Two of Them, illustrated. Crown Svo. 2s. boards ;

it. tid. cloth.

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12

General Lists of Works,

WORKS OF FICTION.

:y H. Eideh Haggaed.

She : a History of Adventure.
With Illustrntiouis by M. Grciflfeii-
liaycn aiul C. H. M Kerr. Crown
8vo. 3s. 6rf.

Allan Quatermain. With Illustra-
tions by C. H. M. Kerr. Crown
8vo. OS. Crf.

Maiwa's Revenge. 2s. boards ; 2s. Gd.
cloth.

By the Earl of BEACoKtfFiELD.

Vivian Grey. Tancred.

Venetia. Sybil.

Coningsby. Alroy, Ixion, &c.

Lothair. Endymion.

The Young Duke, &c.

Coutarini Fleming, kc.

Henrietta Temple.
Price It. each, bds. ; Is. Gd. each, cloth.

The HUGHENDEN EDITION. With

2 Portraits and 11 Vignettes.
11 vols. Crown 8vo. 42.S-.

By G. J. Why-ie-Melvillk.

The Gladiators. I Kate Coventry.

The Interpreter. Digby Grand.

Holmby House. | General Bounce.

Good for Nothing.

The Queen's JIaries.
Price l6'. each, bds. ; 1^. Gd. each, cloth.

By Elizabeth M. Sewell.

Amy Herbert. I Cleve Hall.

Gertrude. Ivors.

Ursula. I Earl's Daughter.

The E.xperience of Life.

A Glimpse of the World.

Katharine Ashtou.

Margaret Percival.

Laneton Parsonage.
Price Is. each, boards ; Is. 6rf. each,
cloth, plain ; 2*-. Gd. each, cloth extra,
gilt edges.

By Mrs. Molkswouth.
Marrying and Giving in Marriage.
Price 2s. Gd. cloth.

By DOIiOTHEA Gerakd.
Orthodox. Price Gs.

Tliree in Norway. B> Two op Them.

With a ilaii and 59 Illustrations on

Wood. Crown 8vo. 2*'. boards ;

2.S-. Gd. cloth.

By Mrs. Oliphant.

In Trust. | Madam.

Price Is. each, bds. ; Is. Gd. each, cloth.

By Jajies Payx.

The Luck of the Darrells.
Thicker than Water.
Price li-. each, boards ; Is. Gd. each,
cloth.

By A.VTHOxy Tuollope.
The Warden.
Barchester Towers.
Price Is. each, boards ; Is. Gd. each,
cloth.

By BiiET Haute,
In the Carquinez Woods.

Price l.<. boards ; Is. Gd. cloth.
On the Frontier.
By Shore and Sedge.

Price Is. each, sowed.

By Robert L. Stevbnsox.
The Dynamiter.
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde.
Price li. each, sewed ; Is. Gd. each,
cloth.

By Edxa Lyall.

The Autobiography of a Slander.
Price Is. sewed.

By F. Anstey.
The Black Poodle, and other Stories.
Price 2s. boards ; 2s. Gd. cloth.

By the Author of the ' Ateliei! du

Lys.'

The Atelier du Lys ; or, an Art

Student in the Reign of Terror.

2*. Gd.
Mademoiselle Mori : a Tale of

Modern Rome. 2s. Gd.
In the Olden Time : a Tale of the

Peasant War in Germany . 2s. Gd.
Hester's Teiiture. 2s. Gd.

By Mrs. Deland.
John Ward, Preacher. Or. Svo. Gs.

By W. Hi'.mires Pollock.
A Nine Men's Morrice, &c. Crown
8vo. Gs.

By D. Chkistie Muuray and IIi:.\t.y

:MrnuAY.

A Dans'i-rous Catspaw. Cr. Svo. Gs.

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General Lists of Works. 13

POETRY AND THE DRAMA.

Armstrong's (Ed. J.) Poetical Works. Fcp. 8vo. 5s.

(G. F.) Poetical Works :—
Lyrical and Dramatic. Fcp.

Stories of Wicklow. Fcp. 8vo. 9*.
Mephistopheles in Broadcloth: a

Satire. Fcp. 8vo. is.
Victoria Regina et Imperatrix : a

Jubilee Song from Ireland, 1887.

4to. 2s. 6d.

XJgone : a Tragedy. Fcp. 8vo. Ss.

AQ-arland from Greece. Fcp. Syo.Bs.

King Saul. Fcp. 8vo. 5^.

King David. Fcp. 8vo. 6s.

King Solomon. Fop, 8vo. 6*.
Ballads of Books. Edited by Andrew Lang. Fcp. 8vo. 6s.
Bowen's Harrow Songs and other Verses. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. 6d. ; or printed on

hand-made paper, 5s.
Bnwdler's Family Shakespeare. Medium 8vo. 14*. 6 vols. fcp. 8vo. 21*.
Dante's Divine Comedy, translated by James Inncs Minchin. Crown 8vo. 15i,
Deland's The Old Garden, and other Verses. Fcp. 8vo. 5i-.
Goethe's Faust, translated by Birds. Large crown 8vo. 12*. 6d,

— — translated by Webb. 8vo. 12*. 6d.

— — edited by Selss. Crown 8vo. 5*.
Ingelow's Poems. 2 Vols. fcp. 8vo. 12.«. ; Vol. 3, fcp. 8vo. 5*.

— Lyrical and other Poems. Fcp. 8vo. 2*. 6d. cloth, plain ; 3*. cloth,

gilt edges.
Kendall's (May) Dreams to Sell. Pep. 8vo. 6*.
Lang's Grass of Parnassus. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.

Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. Illustrated by Scharf. 4to. 10*. 6d. Bijou
Edition, fcp. 8vo. 2s. Sd. Popular Edit., fcp. 4to. 6d. swd., 1*. cloth.

— Lays of Ancient Rome, with Ivry and the Armada. Illustrated by

Weguelin. Crown 8vo. 3*. 6d. gilt edges.
Nesbit's Lays and Legends, Crown 8vo. 5*.

— Leaves of Life. Crown 8vo. 5*.

Newman's The Dream of Gerontius. 16mo. 6d. sewed ; 1*. cloth.

— Verses on Various Occasions. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.

Reader's Voices from Flowerland : a Birthday Book. 2*. 6d. cloth, 3*. G<;. roan.

Riley's Old-Fashionea Ptoses. Fcp. 8vo. 5.?.

Southey's Poetical Works. Medium 8vo. 14*.

Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. Fcp. 8vo. 5*.

Sumner's The Besom Maker, and other Country Folk Songs. 4to. 2*. 6cf.

Virgil's .aineid, translated by Conington. Crown 8vo. C*.

— Poems, translated into English Prose. Crown 8vo. 6*.

SPORTS AND PASTIMES.

Campbell-Walker's Correct Card, or How to Play at Whist. Pep. 8vo. 2,','. Gd.
Ford's Theory and Practice of Archery, revised by W. Butt. 8vo. 14*.
Francis's Treatise on Fishing in all its Branches. Post 8vo. 15*.
Longunia's Chess Openings. Fcp. 8vo. 2*. 6d.

Pole's Theory of the Modern Scientific Game of Whist. Fcp. 8vo, 2*. 6d,
Proctor's How to Play Wbist. Crown 8vo. 5*.

— Home Wliist. ISrao. 1*. sewed.
Ronald^'s Ply-Fisher's Entomology. 8vo. 14*.
Wilcocks's Sea-Fisherman. Post 8vo. 6*.

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14 General Lists of Works.

AGRICULTURE, HORSES, DOGS, AND CATTLE
Fitzwygram's Horses and Stables. 8vo. 5s.
Lloyd's The Science of Agriculture, 8vo. 12*.
Loudon's Encyclopffldia of Agriculture. 21s,

Prothero's Pioneers and Progress of English Farming. Crown 8vo. 5s.
Steel's Diseases of the Ox, a Manual of Bovine Pathology. 8vo. ISi,

— — — Dog. 8vo. 10s. dd.
Stonehenge'a Dog in Health and Disease. Square crown 8vo. 7s. M,
Taylor's Agricultural Note Book. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. 6d,
Ville on Artificial Manures, hy Crookes. 8vo. 21*.
Youatt's Work on the Dog. 8vo. 6*.

— _ _ _ Horse. 8vo. 7*. 6d.

MISCELLANEOUS WORKS.

A. K. H. B., The Essays and Contributions of. Crown 8vo.

Autumn Holidays of a Coautry Paison. 3s. Qd.

Changed Aspects of Unchanged Truths. Zs. 6d.

Common-Place Philosopher in Town and Country. 3s. 6d.

Critical Essays of a Country Parson. 3s. 6d.

Counsel and Comfort spoken from a City Pulpit. 3s. 6d.

Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson. Three Series. 3s. Gd. each.

Landscapes, Churches, and Moralities. 3s. Sd.

Leisure Hours in Town. 3s. 6d. Lessons of Middle Age. 3s. 6d.

Our Homely Comedy ; and Tragedy. 3s. 6d.

Our Little Life. Essays Consolatory and Domestic. Two Series. 3». 6d. I

Present-day Thoughts. 3s. Gd. [eacb. j

Recreations of a Country Parson. Three Series. 3s. 6d, each. !

Seaside Musings on Sundays and Week-Days. 3s. 6d. i

Sunday Afternoons in the Parish Church of a University C'tv. 3<. Sd. \
Archer's Masks or Faces ? A Study in the Psychology of Acting. Crown 8vo. t

(is. 6(7.
Armstrong's (Ed. J.) Essays and Sketches. Fcp. 8vo. 5s.
Arnold's (Dr. Thomas) Miscellaneous Works. 8vo 7s. Gd.
Bagehot's Literary Studies, edited by Hutton. 2 vols. 8vo, 28s.
Beaconsfield (Lord), The Wit and Wisdom of. Crown 8vo. Is. boards ; Is. 6d. ol
Parrar's Language and Language:^, Crown 8vo. 6s.
Huth's The Marriage of Near Kin. Royal 8vo. 21s.
Lang's Letters to Dead Authors. Fcp. 8vo. 6s. 6d.

— Books and Bookmen. Crown 8vo. 6s. Gd.

— Letters on Literature. Fcp. Svo. Cs. Gd.

MatthcwA' (Brander) Pen and Ink. lieprintcd Papor.-. Crown Svn. 5.-,-.

Max :\Iiiiler"s Lectures on the Science of Language, 2 vols, crown Svo. Ifi--. !

— — Lectures on India. 8vo. 12s. Gd. '

— — Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas. Crown Svo.7 s.Gd.
Rendlc and Nonnan's Inns of Old Southwark. Illustrated. Royal Svo. 28s.
Smith (Sydney) The Wit and Wisdom of. Crown 8vo. Is. boards ; Is. 6d. cloth.
Wendt's Papers on Maritime Legisla^^ion. Royal Svo. £1. lis. inl. I

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General Lists of Works. 15

MEDICAL AND SURGICAL WORKS.

Ashby'sNoteson PhjsiologyfortheXJseof Students. 120 Illustrations. 18mo. ;■<.>■.
Ashby and Wright's The Diseases of Children, Merlical and Surgical. Crown 8vo.
Barker's Short Manual of Surgical Operations. With 61 Woodcut?. Cr. 8vo. l->s. dd.
Bentley's Text-book of Organic Materia Medica. 62 Illustrations. Cr. Svo. 7s. Cd-
Coats's Manual of Pathology. With 339 Illustrations. Svo. ols. 6d.
Cooke's Tablets of Anatomy. Post 4to. 7s. 6d.

Dickinson's Eenal and Uriuai-y Affections. Complete in Three Parts, 8ro. with
12 Plates and 122 Woodcuts. £3. 4.s-. Gd. clotb.
^ The Tongue as an Indication of Disease. Svo. 7s. Gd.

Erichsen's Science and Art of Surgery. 1 ,025 Engravings. 2 vols. Svo. iSs.

— Concussion of the Spine, &o. Crown Svo. lO.s. Gd.

Gairdner and Coats's Lectures on Tabes Mesenterica. 28 Illustrations. Svo. 12.i. 6d.
Garrod's (Sir Alfred) Treatise on Gout and Rheumatic Gout. Svo. 21s.

— — Materia Medica and Therapeutics. Crown Svo. ]2.s. 0(7.
Garrod's (A. G.) Use of the Laryngoscope. With Illustrations. Svo. 3s. Orf.
Gray's Anatomy. With .569 Illustrations. Royal Svo. 36s.

Hassan's San Remo Climatically and Medically Considered. Crown Svo. 55.

— The Inhalation Treatment of Disease. Crown Svo. 12*. 6rf.
Hewitt's The Diseases of AVomen. With 211 Engravings. Svo. 2is.
Holmes's System of Surgery. 3 vols, royal Svo. £-1. 4s.

Ladd's Elements of Physiological Psychology. With 113 Illustrations. Svo. 21.?.
Little's In-Knee Distortion (Genu Valgum). With 40 Illustrations. Svo. Is. Gd.
Liveing's Handbook on Diseases of the Skin. Fcp. Svo. 5s.

— Notes on the Treatment of Skin Diseases. ISmo. 3s.

— Elephantiasis Grffioorum, or True Leprosy. Crown Svo. 4,?. Gd.
Lougmore's The Illustrated Optical Manual. With 7i Illustrations. Svo. 14s.

— Gunshot Injuries. With 58 Illustrations. Svo. 31s. Gd.
Mitchell's Dissolution and Evolution and the Science of Medicine. Svo. 1 6s.
Munk's Euth.anasia ; or, Medical Treatment in Aid of an Eas-y Death. Cr. Svo. 4s. Gd.
Murchison's Continued Pevers of Great Britain. Svo. 25s.

— Diseases of the Liver, Jaundice, and Abdominal Dropsy. Svo. 24^.
Paget's Lectures on Smgical Patliology. With 131 Woodcuts. Svo. 21^.

— Clinical Lectures and Essays. Svo. 15s.

Quain's (Jones) Elements of Anatomy. 1,000 Illustrations. 2 vols. Svo. ISs. each.
Quain's (Dr. Richard) Dictionary of Medicine. With 138 Illustrations. 1 vol. Svo.

31s. Gd. cloth, or 40s. half-russia. To be had also in 2 vols. 34s. cloth.
Salter's Dental Pathology and Surgery. With 133 Illustrations. Svo. 18s.
Schafer's The Essentials of Histology. With 283 Illustrations. Svo. 6s,
Smith's (H. P.) The Handbook for Midwives. With 41 Woodcuts. Cr. Svo. 5s.
Smith's (T.) Manual of Operative Surgery on the Dead Body. 40 Illus. Svo. 12s.
Thomson's Conspectus adapted to the British Pharmacopoeia of 1885. ISmo. 6s.
West's Lectures on the Diseases of Infancy and Childhood. Svo. 18s.
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases. Fcp. Svo. 2s. Gd.
Williams's Pulmonary Consumption. With 4 Plates and 10 Woodcuts. Svo. ICs.
Wright's Hip Disease in Childhood. With 48 Woodcuts. Svo. 10s. 6J.

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16 General lists of Works.

THE BADMINTON LIBRARY.

Edited by the Duke of Beaufoht, K.G. and A. E. T. Watsox.
Hunting. By the Duke nf Beaufort, K.G. and Mowbray Morris. With Con-
tributions by the Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire, Rev. E. W. L. Davies,
D'shy Collins, and Alfred E. T. AVatson. With Coloured Frontispiece and
."■i." Illustrations on Wood by J. Sturgess, J. Charlton, and Acnes M. Biddulph
Tnurth Edition. Crown Hvo. 10s. 6rf.
Fishing. By H. Oholmondeley-Pennell. With Contributions by the Marquis
of Exeter, Henry R. Francis, M.A. Major John P. Traherne, G. Christopher
Davies, R. B. Marston, &c.
Vol. I. Salmon, Trout, and Grayling. With Frontispiece, and 1-50 Illustra-

tinns of Tackle, &c. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. lO.s-. 6rf.
Vol. II. Pike and other Coarse Fish. With Frontispiece, and 58 Illustrations
of Tackle, &c. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 10.«. G,/.
Racing and Steeple-Chasing. Racing : By the Earl of Suffolk and W. G.
Craven. With a Contribution by the Hon. F. Lawley. Steeple-chasing :
By Arthur Coventry and Alfred E. T. Watson. With Coloured Frontispiece
and oC, Illustrations by J. Sturgcss. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 10^. 6(/.
Shooting. By Lord Walsingham nnd Sir Ralph Payno-Galhvey. With Con-
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